The Catholic Book Club discussion

5. We have read and discussed several dystopian books over the past few years, including Lord of the World, A Canticle for Leibowitz and Comet Dust: An Apocalyptic Chiller Based On Real Prophecy. And of course there are numerous secular dystopian novels that many of us have read, including 1984, Brave New World and what was probably the first modern dystopian novel, We. Dystopian novels create their setting by taking features of our current world and pushing them to the extreme. They "work" to the extent that the world they describe is still imaginable as a potential world we could reach. Does I Am Margaret "work"? How do you compare it to other dystopian novels you've read?

I'm halfway through the book, and I recall there were comparisons made with The Hunger Games and the Divergent series. Certainly there are some common thean mes--a coming-of-age test that determines the kind of life and work one will face as an adult; the choice is made by faceless people, and those who fail the test face death. In the Hunger Games those tested are chosen by lottery. In Divergent and Margaret, the participants are sorted according to their strengths and/or weaknesses, and in all three, the protagonist challenges the system or rebels against the status quo. The losers in all three novels usually die young, but in Margaret's case the death is accepted as inevitable, and involves "dismantling," or taking the victim's body apart piece by piece, no chance to evade the grisly death , no hope of rescue, and early in the story Margaret, whose only flaw is difficulty with Math class, is forced with her fellow "reassignees" to watch the gruesome oconscious dismantlement of a priest in a world where religion is cruelly persecuted. Even with gifts and talents usually recognized as compensation for one's weaknesses, those reassigned in the compound are made painfully aware that this is their fate, to be an unwilling organ donor because the dystopia has no other use for them. What sets this novel apart, I think, is the inevitability of a brutal death with little chance of redemption.

I'm reminded, too, of Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, in which an "orphanage" houses young people who have been cloned for the purpose of providing organs for their "original." I found the dismantling presented early in Margaret's story graphic and difficult, but as a Catholic novel, the scene adds a layer of awareness that faith in Christ invites martyrdom, although the body recycling is almost a parody of Christian sacrifice. Do the peculiar Catholic actions and the prayers of Margaret and Jonathan work here? I'm not sure yet. I wonder why the Latin prayers are said, and why Bane doesn't share the faith with his friends. I wonder what a non-Catholic young adult reading this story would think of the Catholic elements of does it matter if they don't understand them.