July 19, 2011
The Windup Girl
I selected this book to read based solely on its appearance from a Google search of books that have won both the hugo and the nebula awards (which if you don't know are both sci-fi novel awards.) This book is the most recent novel to meet that criteria, so I read it.
The book takes place in an energy-poor, post-apocalyptic future, and is set almost entirely in Bankok, Thailand. It is imaginative, vivid, and unfortunately makes what I think are clever, plausible, and extremely bleak predictions about what the world will be like in 150 years.
The characters are all interesting, all flawed, and all believable. I changed my mind several times throughout the story about who I liked, who I hated, and who deserved the messy and violent death that they were inevitably rushing towards. In a good way.
Technology is a subtle backdrop for this book's characters rather than a subject in itself, although I think the science was very sound. The most advanced engineering is genetic; in an energy-poor future there are blimps and sail-hydrofoils and bicycles, but no rockets or super-computers or jet fighters. This is part of what gives the book its bleak feel. (Although not as bleak as Oryx and Crake--- good lord.)
The book ends climactically, with nicely crafted closure for most all of the characters. And in a weird way it even left me feeling like perhaps it was, if not a "happy" ending, at least a vaguely positive and satisfying one. So I give Paolo high marks for being able to end a book. NEIL.
My main caution about the book is that you need to be willing to read about futile desires, flawed characters, a pessimistic view of the future of mankind, and also some violence (including sexual violence) and of course tons of swearing.
My favorite thing about this book is the vivid writing--- Paolo made me feel the oppressive heat, politics, disease, and conflict of Bankok, but without without pages and pages of descriptive text. Instead, he showed how the characters saw their world, as he told their stories, and that made it both more clear and more engaging.
All the same, I probably won't rush to read something else by Paolo; I need to hug a bunch of kittens and stare at a rainbow for a while first.