I suspect because the author is Swedish she is having a sly little dig at Scandinavian principles of social responsibility and Sweden’s tendency towards “popular movements”. But this is a remarkably thought-provoking novel. I’m not going to say any more, for fear of spoiling the plot. But then something totally unexpected happens - she falls in love with an older man - and things take a turn for the better, or do they? She escapes the more unpleasant medical experiments and surgical procedures that rob her friends of body parts. For the most part her new life is a contented one. Once ensconced in her own little apartment at The Unit, Dorrit develops close friendships with other residents. Nor is there any excuse not to work when you have children”.īut Dorrit, who had several lovers over the years, never found the right man to settle down with, so children never entered the equation. Laws were changed incrementally - equal amounts of parental leave for men and women, compulsory daycare for children - so that “there is no longer any excuse not to have children.
Children and a family were something that could come later, or even something you could choose to do without.īut when a new political party, the Capital Democrats, swept to power, those values got turned on their head. …getting by, coping, standing on your own two feet - financially, socially, mentally and emotionally - was important and that was sufficient. She had been lead to believe, as a young woman, that… The story is told through the eyes of Dorrit Wegner, a writer who is checked into The Unit for failing to be a “productive” member of society. This is a rather chilling premise for a book, no?
And that biological material is sourced from those “dispensable” 50- and 60-year-olds who are its captive residents. But this comes at a price, for the Unit is essentially a donor bank for biological material. Here, under the ever-watchful eyes of CCTV cameras and well-attuned listening devices, you can live the rest of your days in relative comfort, with your every whim - bar freedom - catered for. If you have failed to settle down and reproduce by the age of 50, for women, and 60, for men, you are immediately shipped off to a special facility - The Unit, of the title.
Ninni Holmqvist’s The Unit is set in a dystopian future where a human being’s worth is measured by their ability and willingness to marry and have children. Translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy. Fiction – paperback Oneworld Publications 272 pages 2010.
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