Unwind by Neal Shusterman

 

This review was written by: B
Received: Purchased
Publishing Date of Book: November 2007
Pages: 335

Stars: (5/5)

“In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn’t a perfect world. The problem is the people who think it is.”
-Neal Shusterman, “Unwind”

Sometimes people need to take a step back from life and escape into an unthinkable dimension where their worries are not for themselves, but for others. Reading a book, especially “Unwind, ” a personal favorite of mine, is that solution of illusion that puts you into a possible future in which you leave behind everyday life and ask the question: What if? Neal Shusterman’s “Unwind” spins a story of a believable world after the Second Civil War, better known as the Heartland War, that was fought over the issue of abortion. This bloody conflict ended with the passing of the Bill of Life allowing children between the ages of thirteen and eighteen to be retroactively “aborted” through the transplanting of their organs into different donors so that life does not officially end. This terrifying action, known as unwinding, is about to occur to three very different yet similarly connected people: Connor, Lev, and Risa. Will these individuals make it to adulthood together, or will they be separated, surviving on their own with unwind against unwind, only to be caught and erroneously “murdered”?
Shusterman was able to write a gripping novel that I could not bring myself to put down despite his controversial subject matter. The countless brave individuals, who stood up for what they believed in, consistently fought for themselves and the rights of those whom they never met, yet they felt like they somehow knew. The fictional society, post abortion, was extremely captivating in the terrifying way that civilization played out, with people treating each other with a blind eye and a stone heart. Shusterman had a writing style that naturally intrigued me, with brave debates facing everyday issues in our world. He also elaborated on our human nature where we want to turn our backs on others yet make the hard choice to save them. Honestly, “Unwind” kept my fingers and eyes glued to every single startling page until the very end.
It is my belief that everyone should read this masterpiece. A book such as this, which offers adventure, the honest hardships of friendships, the tribulations that survival entails, and they difficult issues that present day humanity finds itself trying to face, is hard to come by. “Unwind” demonstrates heart wrenching decisions that play off in a domino effect. Everyone is running from something, but Connor, Risa, and Lev have higher stakes bearing down on them. I guarantee that all readers will enjoy this story in one way or another. At the end, you get to choose for yourself if you cannot change laws without first changing human nature, or if you cannot first change human nature without first changing the law.

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