Unwind Monthly Review

Unwind, a fictional book by Neal Shusterman, does more than just describe a story to you; this book teaches as well as describes to you the consequences to a very possible 'twist' in history. Although the story begins with a character named Connor, there is an even mixture of all three of the other character's, Risa and Lev's, stories as things progress. These three have but one thing in common, and that is that they are all supposed to go through a process called 'unwinding'.

"... life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end...."

Unwinding entails a person being, in short, taken apart piece by piece while the parts of their body (every single one) are used around the world as donors to people who need them. Though there is much opposition to this opinion, the process of unwinding is supposed to be a humane way of getting rid of someone without actually getting rid of them. The main problem that most of the population have with this process is not with the process itself, but with the fact that it's the parent's decision as opposed to it being the child's decision. Connor, Lev, and Risa team up through a strange sequence of events and are thus together (for some durations) while they try to escape their unwinding.

More than a few questions can be answered in this book, the first one being "for what audiences is this book intended?" This book, honestly, could be intended for all ages. Although the storyline follows teenagers through their lives, the plot line has a lot to do with the real world and the idea of how far laws can go until they're inhumane. The book brings up a variety of very adult ideas and questions, such as the idea of unwinding itself. Is it possible? That's the main question that skipped through my head as I got further into the book. In my opinion? Yes, it's very possible for something like this to happen. Some people will really go through whatever it takes to get rid of something (or someone in this case) that they don't want anymore without having the guilt of just killing it. I think that was what the whole point with the law stating the the children who are unwound are still technically 'alive'. In addition, the story has a few compelling adults in it as well. The book does a fantastic job at changing the perspective of scenes without making the book seem too jumpy, and it goes into the perspective of people who aren't even main characters. Some of the perspective changes are directed to people who don't even have proper names, such as a perspective change to 'Cop' or 'Woman'. By using these changes, however, you get a bit of a different perspective on things; in this way, the book doesn't seem biased to one side or the other, it shows people who think about certain aspects of unwinding that make it seem better than it actually is.

"9. Mother
The mother is nineteen, but she doesn't feel that old...Funny, but the Bill of Life was supposed to protect the sanctity of life. Instead it just made life cheap... From the time she learned that she was pregnant she knew that she would end up storking this baby... As she hurries down the street, she thinks how wonderful it is that she can get a second chance. How wonderful it is that she can dismiss responsibility so easily."

The second question that I can easily answer is "What was the author's purpose in writing this book?" The author's main point, I should think, was to show an example of how far people will go in order to relieve themselves of the burden of destroying something that should be cared for. The quote above is an excerpt in which a woman 'storks' her child. Storking is when a newborn baby is left on the doorstep of someone else, which actually used to be fairly common; according to the laws in this book, when a child is storked then the family who owns the doorstep must take the child unless they spot the owner fleeing. The woman should feel guilty that she's just handing a baby to a stranger, but she gets less of a guilt trip because it's a family who owns a decent home and it's a family that is 100% obliged to take the child. If she had to throw her child in a pit or kill it right then, I doubt she'd be so willing. Later in the book, Connor describes his experience with a storked baby:

"... it was early in the morning, and my parents figured no one saw the baby left at the door, right? So the next morning, before the rest of us got up, my dad put the baby on a doorstep across the street... Things go on like it never happened. Everything was quiet for a while, and then two weeks later, I open the door, and there on that stupid welcome mat is another baby in a basket.... My Mom, all frustrated, brought the baby in, and that's when she realizes... it's the same baby!... only now it's not looking too good..."

You see my point? People today do sort of the same thing, only a smarter alternative (abortions). I don't know what i would do if that storked baby ended up on my doorstep but, actually, i might stork it again. Does that make me cruel? I'm 15, I doubt I'd have enough money or time to raise a child that doesn't belong to me; however, I think a child is better suited in an orphanage or something along those lines then being handed off until it dies of malnutrition.

The last thing that I'll be going over is the description of a character that I favored in particular throughout the book. I'd have to say that i found both Connor and Lev very interesting characters, Lev more so than Conner. You see, although Conner was more of a 'main' character, he seemed fairly bland to me. He's an average protagonist. Rebellious, strong, smart, has his weaknesses, falls in love with the female of the group, and his personality doesn't stick out as much as I expected it to. The plot of the book definitely boosted his unique qualities, but if you look at him from a wide perspective then he's not very different. I believe that only added to the book though, because of his normality it's a lot easier for people to relate to him while they're reading. I hate to compare books that are on completely different labels but the Twilight saga uses this a lot. Bella, the main character, doesn't have too detailed of a description and because of this a lot of girls easily put themselves in her place. That's the reason the book is so popular, when people don't have a face to put to a character then they often substitute it with either themselves or someone close to them. Lev, on the other hand, was a very unique character. Unlike the other two, he had somewhat more of a decision when it came to being unwound. He's a tithe, which is someone who is unwound for the purpose of giving their body to the people. When Lev is on his way to the unwind camp, he is interrupted by Connor and Risa and is "kidnapped" by them. Throughout the book, Lev's ideas of being tithed and unwinding changes a lot. He goes from willingly being unwound to being a 'clapper' who, in a simpler description, is someone who sacrifices themselves in an explosion to cause chaos. Lev never does kill himself, but the steps he went through to do so are very shocking. The thing I liked the most about Lev though was the balance of innocence. At one point, he cleverly barters his way to getting $500 from a stubborn trader. When on his way to get the money though...:

"...He pulls open the door, and the second he does, he feels something hard and heavy connecting with his head. His thoughts are instantly scrambled. He loses consciousness before he hits the ground,
The pawnbroker comes to sometime layer, with a headache and a faint memory that something had gone wrong. It takes a few seconds for him to pull himself together and realize exactly what happened. That little monster conned him! He got guns to open the safe, and the moment he did, he knocked him out and cleaned out the safe.
Sure enough, the safe was open wide -- but it's not entirely empty. Inside is the bracelet, its gold and diamonds looking even brighter against the ugly gray steel of the empty safe. How much was inside the safe? Fifteen hundred, tops. This bracelet is worth at least three times that. Still a deal -- and the kid knew it."

He can still keep that kind heart that we all wish we had, he stayed clever and managed to get away with as much as he could while still being a decent kid. You can't help but respect that kind of intuition. The other scene in which I was again astounded by his courage was his travels with a kid named Hi-Fi; I won't go in depth, but I will say that at the end he manages to show his real compassion towards those who need it, and his bitter hatred towards those who don't offer theirs.

Overall, this book was amazing. I wish I could buy it, and maybe I will eventually, but for right now I had just gotten it from the library. This is the final book review, and I'd like to give a special thanks to people who really made me want to read more. Sutherland, of course, but he'll get a better thank you in my final. Adam, who introduced me to this amazing book and discussed some very interesting things about it with me that i would have never thought of. Grace always read the same book as me, and we discussed (in a very girlish fashion, I might add) the characters and plot twists that we adore so much. There might be even more people, and I apologize if I failed to mention you, who also contributed, but for now these are the people who helped the most. I hope to read even more books in my life, maybe even become one of those people who horde books and read them again and again, handing them off to their children and such.