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The Cure
Raul and his sister Arym live in a world of intolerance for those who question the imposed belief of his people. When it is discovered that Raul is an "unbeliever", he is sent to be ‘cured’ and re-indoctrinated into the system …---“A clever and sharply-written piece of satire” – Financial Times Magazine“Scary, thrilling and clever … Not a frothy tale, but well thought out and with a powerful message” – Waterstones Magazine“This strong story has lots of talking points … it deserves to do very well indeed” – School Librarian“Coleman manages to create an entire new world, a world so different to ours yet so familiar, with expertise and subtlety” – Hackwriters.com“A challenging and thought-provoking story about belief and humanity” – Bookfest“The author uses this curious and gripping tale to encourage us to think for ourselves and not necessarily accept what we are told to believe” - Flipside“An incredible book with an even more incredible message, and all told from a completely original angle” – Cork Evening Echo---The Cure was originally published in print form by Orchard Books.
270 pages, Hardcover
First published September 6, 2007
3 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Michael Coleman
212 books16 followersColeman was born in Forest Gate, a suburb in east London. Not long after he was born, his family moved a few miles east to Barking. At the time of his arrival, the area was just starting to recover from the damage it had received during World War II. He lived in a house on Bevan Avenue, named after Aneurin Bevan the architect of the National Health Service. He lived in that estate for 20 years. The area helped develop Coleman's love of sport due to the oblong shaped lanes of grass leading up the estate, which could be used as mini-stadiums. He pretended to play at various sporting events of the time, e.g. the Melbourne Olympics of 1956, the soccer Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, and the games at Lords Cricket ground. He still has medals he won for being school champion in the 100m sprint and the long jump. As said by Coleman himself "My information series Foul Football tries to convey some of the magic I felt about the game of soccer by relating the weird and wonderful history of the game and the personalities it has seen over the years. On the fiction side, my series about a junior soccer team called Angels FC tries to bring out the humour and sheer fun that you’ll find at the heart of the game when it’s played by youngsters who don’t even know how to spell the word cynicism." Coleman had his first children’s book published when he was 46 years of age. He has also said: "I didn't [want to become a writer] at first. I used to teach computer science at a university and my first book was a boring one about computers. I livened it up by putting a few jokes in. At the end I thought I'd try writing a few more things, but this time forgetting about the computers and concentrating on the jokes. After lots of failures I realised that youngsters enjoy jokes more than adults and started writing for them. Eighty books later, I'm still doing it...I write both fact and fiction. The Foul Football series are favourite fact books, simply because they're about football. On the fiction side, I'm just finishing a trilogy called The Bearkingdom. They're dark and scary, quite different to anything I've written before."
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 28, 2014
Religious preaching masqueraded with science. This book annoyed me and I can't stand books that make me feel like that so I just didn't finish it.
August 28, 2014
Oooooooooooh boy. This will be fun, guys. I will use the format of a list of reasons why this book doesn’t work.
I will make the confession upfront that I am an atheist. However, I hope to explain why this book is poorly done in such a way that it isn’t just about my own personal beliefs, although in a review like this it is inevitable that personal beliefs will get mentioned. This review is filled with spoilers.
First things first: The Plot
This book is about a young boy called Raul who lives in a regime which worships science and human achievement. And when I say worships science I mean literally. Darwin is considered to be their saviour who liberated them from superstition and there is a book called The Writings which is basically written in Biblical language/copied and pasted from the Bible but edited to worship science. Religion is banned. Raul and his sister Arym live in a house that is basically an orphanage (though in this case their mother gave them up according to the state). The early part of the book is set around the de facto ‘canonisation’ of a new saint, a celebrity who is a pop singer. However, Raul rebels against this canonisation and gets sent (with his sister for reasons) to a sanatorium where they purport to put right his rejection of the society around him. The sanatorium is the setting for the vast majority of the book. I will explain any other plot-related details as they come up in my review.
Bullet Points: Why doesn’t this story work?
1. The world building feels like the author took two different stories, and shoved them into one book.
The initial 50 pages are focussed on the celebrity culture critique that the author wants to provide, and indeed the fact that this book is a supposed satire on celebrity is mentioned on the back cover puff (from Gillian Cross no less!). There is to be a ceremony to canonise a singer who is popular and Arym is really excited about it while Raul is fed up of it all. The basically worship of the celebrity is shown through the creation of tacky products and the hawking of such and the creation of statues in their honour, continued page 94. Raul gets annoyed about it all and smashes a statuette of a celebrity. All this, in itself, is actually okay (though I think we need more on the development of Raul’s scepticism). The problem comes later on in the work. Once we get to the sanatorium, the focus is all on science, the worship of science and Darwin, and the fact that religion is suppressed. The celebrity thing, despite starting out as the main point early on, feels like an add-on later to the whole plot about whether or not Raul has faith.
I see where the author was coming from on putting both these elements together, because he is trying to make it about worship of man and not God, but it still feels incoherent. The two themes are not linked sufficiently well to make it believable, especially as an obsession with science is largely linked to an intelligentsia, and celebrity culture is generally considered to be a ‘lower class’ pursuit. I feel the plot would have worked better if it was about either celebrity worship, or worship of science/the ‘pantheon’ of great scientists.
2. The technological level is inconsistent.
The main thing I have to say on this is that it is revealed later on in the story that incredibly complex brain surgery science exists, far more complex than what we have. Yet throughout the work, there is barely any mention of already existing technologies such as mobile phones and computers and the internet. The society actually feels primitive in many ways. This makes no sense.
3. The book suffers from too little of it being set outside the sanatorium.
Raul is sent to the sanatorium very early on in the work, and this weakens the book because we do not get enough insight into how the dystopian regime is actually constructed. This means that a lot of the stuff later on comes out of left field (see the stuff on science worship above). It also means that we get instructed in what the society actually believes when we are inside the sanatorium rather than before, and worse than that, it feels as if the characters are getting instructed in it for the first time as well from their responses. This is really bad writing as in a dystopia the characters would have already been indoctrinated with this stuff by the regime previously.
4. How religion is eliminated in this society doesn’t work.
It’s actually quite hard to eradicate religion, you know (witness Communism: it’s not like the Communist Party could erase religion from everyday life even though they wanted to get rid of it. Even then, the only Communist country I know of that actually was able to ban religion outright was Albania). How it happens in this society is a bunch of religious fanatics explode a nuke in a particular place, and because of this a political party based on eliminating religion comes to power and gets voted in by a large majority and starts oppressing all the believers. This doesn’t make a lot of sense because people would be unlikely to blame ‘religion’ per se for such a crime; they would blame Islam, Christianity or whatever specific religion carried out the crime at worst and at best would only blame fanatics of that religion. I mean, in this society if anyone condemns religion as a whole it’s still considered somewhat controversial: witness the theist, and even the atheist, response to Dawkins and Hitchens for proof (even thinkers such Gould, Eagleton, etc. have criticised them). What would be more plausible is a gradual erasure of religious freedom in the name of combatting terror.
5. Atheists worshipping Darwin is a tiresome trope. And where’s the other great atheist philosophers?
Why only Darwin? No, I’m serious. This is where the celebrity culture element founders. It doesn’t make sense for people to worship Darwin and then put singers and sportspeople alongside him. What makes more sense is a worship of an atheist ‘pantheon’ if we have to do this (tedious) trope. Where’s Nietzsche? Marx? Freud?
6. The author preaches to the audience.
The author preaches at us. In the notebook the hero finds, Brother Mark spouts off his view that the religious believers who carried out the atrocities weren’t ‘true’ believers and besides Hitler and Stalin were worse so there. Even assuming I agreed with this, I wouldn’t care because I am reading a fiction book. If I wanted to read this kind of opinion I would pick up a non-fiction book written by a believer. Putting political themes in a fiction book has to be done subtly or its a turn off.
Oh, I am also obliged to point out that Hitler was not an atheist.
7. The author can’t satire celebrity culture if they don’t understand what it is.
There’s a scene in the book where a sportsman is put on a pedestal with scenes from his career around him and merchandise relating to him on sale. I don’t really think this is what celebrity culture is. Let me explain what I mean with an example.
I am a big football fan and my favourite player is Bastian Schweinsteiger. I have an interest in his career and an admiration for his achievements as one of the best defensive midfielders in the world, such as his brilliant performance in the World Cup final of 2014. I wouldn’t really call that an example of celebrity culture. Now, if I was following the papers talking about his personal life and what he and his wag Sarah Brandner were up to, that would be an example of following celebrity culture. (Same logic applies to actors, etc.)
However, the apex of celebrity culture is people that have no actual achievements but are famous merely for being famous. Look at the likes of Joey Essex for example. That is what is ripe for satire, a world where people are canonised for ever more tenuous connections to famous people, who are themselves famous for no reason. However that doesn’t come across in the work. Even the more frivolous canonisations are of people like singers and sports stars, and say what you want about those but it takes actual dedication to get there.
8. The author doesn’t understand how science works.
Science doesn’t stand still, and at a couple of points this is acknowledged in the work. However, science is still canonised in the work The Writings as being absolute truth. You can’t canonise something that might be proven wrong tomorrow!
9. The names thing is stupid
In the book, Biblical names become banned and altered so that people can no longer use them. However, people who have already been given Biblical names are pretty much allowed to keep them. My problem with this is, if you want to write an authoritarian regime here, just go all out and make people from religious communities change their names. You could also then use subversive names as a means of resistance. In fact, there are real life examples of authoritarian regimes using name change as a means of control. The best example I can think of is the forced ‘Bulgarianisation’ of Turkic names during the late Zhivkov era. Also, it annoys me that Paul becomes Raul in the altered version; I just thought the guy was Spanish! (Maybe named after Raul, the striker, in this celebrity culture world?)
10. The topic of Raul and Arym’s mother is raised early on – but goes nowhere.
The idea on this point is that Raul and Arym’s mother gave them up into the care of the Republic, and it’s revealed in such a way so that it’s implied she could still be alive. I assumed this was some sort of foreshadowing, but the point never gets brought up again, in any capacity. I especially thought after it was found out that they had altered names and that their names in the normal world would have been Paul and Mary that the topic of why she called them that would have been raised. But it never is.
The stuff I haven't discussed here isn't any better, including the characters. Avoid this, unless you're an atheist looking for a masochistic experience.
I will make the confession upfront that I am an atheist. However, I hope to explain why this book is poorly done in such a way that it isn’t just about my own personal beliefs, although in a review like this it is inevitable that personal beliefs will get mentioned. This review is filled with spoilers.
First things first: The Plot
This book is about a young boy called Raul who lives in a regime which worships science and human achievement. And when I say worships science I mean literally. Darwin is considered to be their saviour who liberated them from superstition and there is a book called The Writings which is basically written in Biblical language/copied and pasted from the Bible but edited to worship science. Religion is banned. Raul and his sister Arym live in a house that is basically an orphanage (though in this case their mother gave them up according to the state). The early part of the book is set around the de facto ‘canonisation’ of a new saint, a celebrity who is a pop singer. However, Raul rebels against this canonisation and gets sent (with his sister for reasons) to a sanatorium where they purport to put right his rejection of the society around him. The sanatorium is the setting for the vast majority of the book. I will explain any other plot-related details as they come up in my review.
Bullet Points: Why doesn’t this story work?
1. The world building feels like the author took two different stories, and shoved them into one book.
The initial 50 pages are focussed on the celebrity culture critique that the author wants to provide, and indeed the fact that this book is a supposed satire on celebrity is mentioned on the back cover puff (from Gillian Cross no less!). There is to be a ceremony to canonise a singer who is popular and Arym is really excited about it while Raul is fed up of it all. The basically worship of the celebrity is shown through the creation of tacky products and the hawking of such and the creation of statues in their honour, continued page 94. Raul gets annoyed about it all and smashes a statuette of a celebrity. All this, in itself, is actually okay (though I think we need more on the development of Raul’s scepticism). The problem comes later on in the work. Once we get to the sanatorium, the focus is all on science, the worship of science and Darwin, and the fact that religion is suppressed. The celebrity thing, despite starting out as the main point early on, feels like an add-on later to the whole plot about whether or not Raul has faith.
I see where the author was coming from on putting both these elements together, because he is trying to make it about worship of man and not God, but it still feels incoherent. The two themes are not linked sufficiently well to make it believable, especially as an obsession with science is largely linked to an intelligentsia, and celebrity culture is generally considered to be a ‘lower class’ pursuit. I feel the plot would have worked better if it was about either celebrity worship, or worship of science/the ‘pantheon’ of great scientists.
2. The technological level is inconsistent.
The main thing I have to say on this is that it is revealed later on in the story that incredibly complex brain surgery science exists, far more complex than what we have. Yet throughout the work, there is barely any mention of already existing technologies such as mobile phones and computers and the internet. The society actually feels primitive in many ways. This makes no sense.
3. The book suffers from too little of it being set outside the sanatorium.
Raul is sent to the sanatorium very early on in the work, and this weakens the book because we do not get enough insight into how the dystopian regime is actually constructed. This means that a lot of the stuff later on comes out of left field (see the stuff on science worship above). It also means that we get instructed in what the society actually believes when we are inside the sanatorium rather than before, and worse than that, it feels as if the characters are getting instructed in it for the first time as well from their responses. This is really bad writing as in a dystopia the characters would have already been indoctrinated with this stuff by the regime previously.
4. How religion is eliminated in this society doesn’t work.
It’s actually quite hard to eradicate religion, you know (witness Communism: it’s not like the Communist Party could erase religion from everyday life even though they wanted to get rid of it. Even then, the only Communist country I know of that actually was able to ban religion outright was Albania). How it happens in this society is a bunch of religious fanatics explode a nuke in a particular place, and because of this a political party based on eliminating religion comes to power and gets voted in by a large majority and starts oppressing all the believers. This doesn’t make a lot of sense because people would be unlikely to blame ‘religion’ per se for such a crime; they would blame Islam, Christianity or whatever specific religion carried out the crime at worst and at best would only blame fanatics of that religion. I mean, in this society if anyone condemns religion as a whole it’s still considered somewhat controversial: witness the theist, and even the atheist, response to Dawkins and Hitchens for proof (even thinkers such Gould, Eagleton, etc. have criticised them). What would be more plausible is a gradual erasure of religious freedom in the name of combatting terror.
5. Atheists worshipping Darwin is a tiresome trope. And where’s the other great atheist philosophers?
Why only Darwin? No, I’m serious. This is where the celebrity culture element founders. It doesn’t make sense for people to worship Darwin and then put singers and sportspeople alongside him. What makes more sense is a worship of an atheist ‘pantheon’ if we have to do this (tedious) trope. Where’s Nietzsche? Marx? Freud?
6. The author preaches to the audience.
The author preaches at us. In the notebook the hero finds, Brother Mark spouts off his view that the religious believers who carried out the atrocities weren’t ‘true’ believers and besides Hitler and Stalin were worse so there. Even assuming I agreed with this, I wouldn’t care because I am reading a fiction book. If I wanted to read this kind of opinion I would pick up a non-fiction book written by a believer. Putting political themes in a fiction book has to be done subtly or its a turn off.
Oh, I am also obliged to point out that Hitler was not an atheist.
7. The author can’t satire celebrity culture if they don’t understand what it is.
There’s a scene in the book where a sportsman is put on a pedestal with scenes from his career around him and merchandise relating to him on sale. I don’t really think this is what celebrity culture is. Let me explain what I mean with an example.
I am a big football fan and my favourite player is Bastian Schweinsteiger. I have an interest in his career and an admiration for his achievements as one of the best defensive midfielders in the world, such as his brilliant performance in the World Cup final of 2014. I wouldn’t really call that an example of celebrity culture. Now, if I was following the papers talking about his personal life and what he and his wag Sarah Brandner were up to, that would be an example of following celebrity culture. (Same logic applies to actors, etc.)
However, the apex of celebrity culture is people that have no actual achievements but are famous merely for being famous. Look at the likes of Joey Essex for example. That is what is ripe for satire, a world where people are canonised for ever more tenuous connections to famous people, who are themselves famous for no reason. However that doesn’t come across in the work. Even the more frivolous canonisations are of people like singers and sports stars, and say what you want about those but it takes actual dedication to get there.
8. The author doesn’t understand how science works.
Science doesn’t stand still, and at a couple of points this is acknowledged in the work. However, science is still canonised in the work The Writings as being absolute truth. You can’t canonise something that might be proven wrong tomorrow!
9. The names thing is stupid
In the book, Biblical names become banned and altered so that people can no longer use them. However, people who have already been given Biblical names are pretty much allowed to keep them. My problem with this is, if you want to write an authoritarian regime here, just go all out and make people from religious communities change their names. You could also then use subversive names as a means of resistance. In fact, there are real life examples of authoritarian regimes using name change as a means of control. The best example I can think of is the forced ‘Bulgarianisation’ of Turkic names during the late Zhivkov era. Also, it annoys me that Paul becomes Raul in the altered version; I just thought the guy was Spanish! (Maybe named after Raul, the striker, in this celebrity culture world?)
10. The topic of Raul and Arym’s mother is raised early on – but goes nowhere.
The idea on this point is that Raul and Arym’s mother gave them up into the care of the Republic, and it’s revealed in such a way so that it’s implied she could still be alive. I assumed this was some sort of foreshadowing, but the point never gets brought up again, in any capacity. I especially thought after it was found out that they had altered names and that their names in the normal world would have been Paul and Mary that the topic of why she called them that would have been raised. But it never is.
The stuff I haven't discussed here isn't any better, including the characters. Avoid this, unless you're an atheist looking for a masochistic experience.
August 2, 2015
I spend quite a lot of this book rolling my eyes. The idea that this new society treats Science like a religion and persecutes non-believers, religious people, is quite an interesting one, but I felt like it lacked subtlety. Stark symbolism was shoved down my throat at every opportunity. Changing it so that BC and AD, now meant Before Charles Darwin and After Darwin and restarting the calendar so that year 0 was his birth year was a bit far. It meant that I was interested to find out about this society, because it seemed strange that they were using Before Christ and Anno Domini and it didn't feel medieval. But the reveals took it all too far. Referring to Darwin as the Saviour and rewriting the Bible from a scientific perspective was too much.
It was a good idea that would have benefited from some diluting. I think Coleman treated the reader like a child that needed to be spoon-fed the ideas of the book, rather than letting them come to their own conclusions.
It was a good idea that would have benefited from some diluting. I think Coleman treated the reader like a child that needed to be spoon-fed the ideas of the book, rather than letting them come to their own conclusions.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 12, 2013
3.5 stars
Not as fast-moving as the blurb attests, but it is clever and kept me hooked, as the horror of church vs state and church vs science, mandated by a dictatorial regime that 'cures' freedom of thought, became evident.
Great supporting text for those studying religion or Study of Religion in the senior years, for analysis. The irony of the doctrine of The Writings vs that of the Bible, the satire of celebrity status and the discussion of evolutionism vs creationism is cleverly woven into this dystopian society and leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
Suitable for age 13+
Not as fast-moving as the blurb attests, but it is clever and kept me hooked, as the horror of church vs state and church vs science, mandated by a dictatorial regime that 'cures' freedom of thought, became evident.
Great supporting text for those studying religion or Study of Religion in the senior years, for analysis. The irony of the doctrine of The Writings vs that of the Bible, the satire of celebrity status and the discussion of evolutionism vs creationism is cleverly woven into this dystopian society and leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
Suitable for age 13+
June 18, 2015
The author seems to have a problem understanding the scientific thinking process. His novel involves a new age: the age of science. However, he portrays the people of the new order as if indoctrinated in a similar way to a religious cult. Anyone disagreeing with the new order are arrested and sent to an island in an attempt to cure them of their doubts.
Like many people with religious convictions, The author seems unable to understand the scientific thinking process: reasoning, question everything, only deal with facts − and even question so-called facts. I found it very difficult to read past the halfway mark.
Like many people with religious convictions, The author seems unable to understand the scientific thinking process: reasoning, question everything, only deal with facts − and even question so-called facts. I found it very difficult to read past the halfway mark.
July 12, 2012
Every now and then I read a book that is really thought provoking and this was one of them. As someone who is not religious and has frequently had thoughts that religion should be banned for all the trouble it causes this book really makes you wonder about what the world would be like if it WAS banned and how the opposite could be just as bad. How people will attempt to control others beliefs and way of thinking, whether its religion or Aeithism (sp?)
The ending was sad and the thought that they had stayed in there and died rather than smash the window and betray their faith.
The ending was sad and the thought that they had stayed in there and died rather than smash the window and betray their faith.
July 18, 2012
I hate it when a book shows so much potential but instead just turns out to be a waste....the cconcept of this book is very good but the way in which the lead charcter just seemed to show such a lack of motivation and strength to fight...the ending waskind of sad though...
I basically thought the boolk was quite unremarkable...
I basically thought the boolk was quite unremarkable...
February 5, 2013
A very misleading blurb.
January 20, 2025
I feel like a lot more could have been done with the idea in this book
August 21, 2011
I did not finish this book.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews