Falling Apart

 Hmmm, I guess y'all weren't very impressed by my new gravy boat, huh?  It's highly unusual that a post doesn't get a single like or comment on FB (thought folks on other sites did comment).  Well, I was happy to get it.  The downside to buying all my Thanksgiving food early is now I want to start cooking, even though the big day is still over a week away.  Patience, grasshopper, I keep telling myself.   Patience...

My little bookmarks are starting to fall out of my piano books.  I guess the sticky notes are losing their sticky.  If that isn't a metaphor for my life, I don't know what is.  

I have some paper clips, but I don't want to wrinkle my pages.  I'm particular about that.  I like to keep my books -- even my piano books -- as pristine as possible. I don't even use the patterns in knitting books.  I copy them off and use that one as a working copy, so my books will stay nice.  I guess I'll jsut have to flip through and see what I want to play.  That's better anyway.  I won't feel like I need to limit myself to just the songs I've marked.  

Speaking of books, many years ago, I bought a young adult dystopian novel called Unwind, by Neil Schusterman.  

There are 5 books in the series -- though the fifth one is a collection of short stories, and not a part of the main dystology.  

By the way, "dystology" is not a real word, at least not according to Mirriam-Webster.  However, after a bit of research, I found that Mr. Schusterman coined the word himself specifically for this series, and the definition is the study of imaginary situations related to abnormal or dehumanized people.  

Anyway, I'd read the first two years and years ago, but had never read any further, mainly because I didn't want to pay full price for the books. (I'm a bit tight when it comes to Kindle editions) I kept waiting for them to be put on sale, or daily deal, or whatever.  It took more than a decade, but my patience finally paid off.  A week or so ago, they finally, at long last, put them on daily deal, and I snapped them up. 

Since it had been so long since I'd read the first two, I felt like I should go back and re-read them before starting the next one in the series.  It's a good thing I did, because there was an awful lot I'd forgotten.  It was good to refresh my memory a bit.  

The whole premise of the book is (and these aren't spoilers as this is all explained at the beginning of the first book), in a future USA, there has been a long and bloody second Civil War over the issue of abortion.  The war finally ends when both the pro life and pro death side agree to a compromise called the Unwind Accord.  This agreement states that abortion is no longer legal, from the moment of conception up until a child is 13 years old.  Between the ages of 13 - 18, however, a parent or legal guardian can choose to have the child retroactively aborted through the process of what is called unwinding.  

Unwinding involves dismembering the child and selling his organs and tissues to those who may need a new heart or lungs, or arms and legs, or whatever body part is deemed to be defective.  The only condition is that 99.44% of the child's parts must be transplanted into another person. They justify this by convincing themselves that the child is technically still alive, just living in "a divided state".  

I know most fiction requires some level of suspension of disbelief, but to me, this one requires a lot of it. Frankly, I can't imagine anyone on the pro life side believing that dismembering a teenager is somehow more morally acceptable than dismembering an infant in the womb.  I know I'd never agree to anything of the sort, but in this book, everyone is happy by this.  Except, of course, the children who are being dismembered.  

There are other issues I have with these books, but I won't get into them here.  Still, if you can get past all the moral and spiritual implications -- that is, suspend your disbelief enough-- the story itself is pretty good.  I think the most amazing thing about this book is that the main character is not a whiny, self absorbed 17 year old girl who knows everything and is going to singlehandedly save the world (despite having no real life world-saving experience) right after she figures out which of her two suitors she is really in love with.  

That in itself makes it worth the read.