When I first saw these Delirium e-novellas being published at the same time as the main books of the trilogy, I felt left out. I didn't own an e-reader or any device to download e-books, but I wanted to find out what happens in these peripheral narratives to the Delirium series. What revelations were made about Raven's past, before she teamed up with Lena to take down the despotic anti-love government? What did Lena's mother, Annabel, go through for the eleven years she was kept isolated in lockup because of her immunity to the love cure, languishing in filth while her youngest daughter grew up believing her mother died years ago? What was captivity like for Alex after he was shot helping Lena escape to the Wilds just before her expedited curing procedure that would have stolen her passion for Alex, never to be restored this side of paradise? Lena reasonably presumed Alex dead when she ran off haunted and alone into the Wilds, seeing the shirt he wore soak through with blood as he appeared to breathe his last. But Alex didn't die, and his return would complicate Lena's rebuilt life dramatically in Requiem. Added to all this backstory is the early days of Hana's rebellion against the cure that surgically prevents young people from contracting amor deliria nervosa, eliminating raw emotion so courtship can be conducted in an orderly, clinical fashion. We read about Hana's playful rebellion in Delirium, how it feels like a game to her until suddenly it's not, but the short story in this collection reveals more. That's true of all four novellas contained here.
"Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe."
—Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, Raven, & Alex, P. 136, from "Raven"
In "Hana", teens who sneak out for romantic rendezvous have to be more careful than ever. In light of rumors that Invalids are thriving in the Wilds and may be planning a coordinated strike against city governments, the regime wants to dampen enthusiasm for social change before it garners momentum. Daughter of a respected family and matched to someday marry the mayor's son, Hana doesn't want to disgrace her parents, but the idea of clandestine romance thrills her. Lena was horrified to learn of her best friend Hana flouting society's strict precautions against amor deliria nervosa and wanted no part of it, but Hana still sneaks out at night to underground parties whenever an opportunity arises. Her hope is to meet up with Steve Hilt, who gets her heart racing as will no longer be biologically possible after she's forced to receive the cure. Hana feels the electricity of amor like a drug in her veins when she's with Steve, an ecstasy she lives for as much as any sensible longterm goal. "That, too, is an itch—the desire to see him, to kiss him again, to let him put his fingers in my hair—is a monstrous, constant, crawling feeling in my blood and bones. It's worse than a disease. It's a poison. And I like it." Why would she want to exchange that pleasurable rush for the drabness of the cure? Then the night of the raid comes, the night when Hana had begun questioning Steve's commitment—does he care for her, or just want cheap carnal satisfaction?—and the exotic sensual overload of the party they're at suddenly morphs into a river of terror. Regulators are everywhere, beating up hormonal teens for their youthful indiscretion before hauling them away for an early cure to suppress the amor deliria nervosa that obviously has infected them. The raid is panic, horror, fear of lifelong consequences if Hana is caught, not a fun challenge to be taken lightly. Hana's ability to think clearly under duress is her means of escape, and after tonight she's not about to play with fire again. That is, until she stumbles onto Lena's hidden relationship with Alex, the turning point in all their lives.
"Is it possible to tell the truth in a society of lies? Or must you always, of necessity, become a liar?
And if you lie to a liar, is the sin somehow negated or reversed?"
—Delirium Stories, P. 74, from "Annabel"
"Annabel" shifts between the past and present for Lena's mother, who ran away from home as a teenager so she wouldn't have to take the cure. Her serendipitous pickpocketing of a stranger who would one day become Lena's father leads indirectly to Annabel's capture, but readers of Delirium already know the cure won't work on her. Annabel faked it for years, adjusting to life with a cured husband and eventually two daughters, but she was doomed for captivity in the Crypts whenever they found out she was still susceptible to amor deliria nervosa. Reform societies usually refuse to tolerate viewpoints that differ from their own rigid ideology. "A path and a place for everyone, and for the people who disagree, a hole." Such is the way when government is seized by the notion that it knows what's best for us better than we do. Annabel can't push down her true feelings forever, the love inside her like a secret symphony the world is barred from listening to. "But that's the problem with love—it acts on you, works through you, resists your attempts to control. That's what made it so frightening to the lawmakers: Love obeys no laws other than its own. That's what has always made it frightening." Now Annabel rots in a dark cell of the Crypts, no companion to trust with her deepest secrets, no comforting or caressing touch to ward off the evil of her barren surroundings. The only sympathizer she's seen for the past decade is Thomas, her eldest daughter's former boyfriend who, as a guard in the Crypts, can't even speak to Annabel for fear of reprisal. But pieces of extra fabric he's slipped to her over the years, kept stashed in the torn lining of her bed, has given Annabel enough material for a rope to dangle out through a concealed hole in the wall and lower herself the forty-five feet to freedom. Thomas's coded signal that it's finally time for the jailbreak after years with nothing but memories to keep hope alive is almost too much for Annabel to take, but she'll try her best for Lena, who may be out there somewhere pining for her mother. Readers of Requiem know what happens next.
"That's what time does: We stand stubbornly like rocks while it flows all around us, believing that we are immutable—and all the time we're being carved, and shaped, and whittled away."
—Delirium Stories, P. 91, from "Annabel"
Similarly to "Annabel", "Raven" bounces between Raven's memories and the present day, where she gets an inconvenient surprise that complicates her already difficult existence. Raven's father was a physically abusive alcoholic who inflicted awful damage on Raven and her mother, so when the cure was first announced, Raven's mother jumped at the chance to undergo it and insisted her husband do the same. Raven left home early for refuge in the Wilds, hooking on with this group and that until meeting a thief who stole supplies from Raven's newest batch of companions. Raven despised the thief, but he claimed his mother was a nurse, and the little girl Raven was taking care of, Blue, was sick and on the verge of death. Letting the thief go and trusting him to bring back medicine was Blue's only hope. And the thief did return, a sharp young man who had proven his integrity in the eyes of Raven's group and was thenceforth called Tack. His original animosity with Raven couldn't overrule his gut feeling that she was worth returning for, and as they stayed together and formed their own tenacious group that Lena eventually joins, they developed a unique bond of love, filled with gestures and expressions meaningful only to the two of them. Isn't that what love is, the construction of a flesh-and-blood monument that no one will ever understand like the two who have become one? "We keep these things for each other, the deepest parts. In valid cities it's those places that get stomped out first, even before the cure—the wounds and weirdness and the pieces we carry like misshapen gifts, waiting for a person to welcome them." Raven and Tack's freedom-fighting continues in the present with the plot to rescue Julian Fineman from execution, and then on to a goal much bigger than the survival of one person. If they both live through the ordeal of overthrowing the government and taking down those walls, there will be special joy ahead for Raven and Tack.
The most savage tortures of Delirium Stories are in "Alex", and are only hinted at as he summarizes his captivity by guards who viewed Uncureds as subhuman. His agony was disrupted by revolutionaries laying siege to the Crypts, blowing holes in its walls so hundreds of mangled political prisoners could escape. Many were caught and thrown back in their grimy, lightless cells, but Alex eluded his tormentors and made his way to the Wilds, the last place he'd seen Lena before he "died". Lena was a scared young girl of the suburbs back then, needing Alex to give her courage to go against her domineering family and run away rather than receive the cure. Could that girl survive the Wilds? That hope keeps Alex searching for a whisper of evidence that Lena is somewhere out there. When he hears that whisper, Alex takes off like a shot for where Lena might be. If such a miracle is possible in this dirty, disturbing, incredible world, he's going to make it happen. "Amor deliria nervosa. The deadliest of all deadly things." Nothing else could convince people from every station and walk of life to sacrifice themselves for their beloved when society works to ground such feelings to dust under the sharp heel of its boot. As Alex heads after Lena, aware that even if they reunite so much will be different, he ponders the outlawing of love that put every significant event of his life into motion. "Sometimes I think maybe they were right all along, the people on the other side in Zombieland. Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose, either. If we didn't get our hearts stomped on, shattered; if we didn't have to patch and repatch until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together and bound up by who knows what. If we could just float along, like snow. That's what Zombieland is: frozen, calm, quiet. It's the world after a blizzard, the peacefulness that comes with it, the muffled silence and the sense that nothing in the world is moving. It's beautiful, in its own way. Maybe we'd be better off. But how could anyone who's ever seen a summer—big explosions of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey—pick the snow?" Only the inexorable vow of summer's return keeps us sane through winter's deep freeze, the end of verdant life and the washing out of the world to a dinge of white and gray. Spring and summer will come again after the most violent heartbreak, and it will be worth waiting to see those buds in new bloom, color and aroma so sweet we'll know the season for love has circled back around. We accept the good and bad of amor deliria nervosa because life is nothing without it, wherever the thrill ride takes us. It's why they call life the great adventure.
I don't recommend reading Delirium Stories without doing the trilogy first. These novellas are best understood in the context of the novels, filling in timeline gaps and adding perspective to the characters' actions. The quality of the stories is about the same as Requiem, and that's pretty high praise. I considered ranking "Hana", "Annabel", "Raven", and "Alex" from best to least, but they fit together so well it would almost be like ranking chapters in a novel. Delirium Stories should be viewed as a single book, a fount of wisdom and feeling that nicely complements the Delirium series. I thought about rating it two and a half stars because it's so dependent on readers knowing the trilogy, but I'll go with the full three. I'm going to miss this series, its characters, and the profound truths I absorbed from their story. Farewell, Delirium, and thank you, Lauren Oliver.