Anthem

Starred review from November 1, 2021
At the start of this grim, thought-provoking near-future thriller from Hawley (Before the Fall), five Wisconsin teenagers die by suicide in less than two weeks, each writing "A11" somewhere near where their bodies are found. The plague spreads nationwide and then internationally, creating a mind-numbing death count. Adults struggle to understand what's happening, some theorizing that the fatalities are a consequence of the Covid pandemic's social isolation. Many fear the suicides represent an "act of collective surrender" presaging the extinction of humanity. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Simon Oliver, who found his older sister dead from overdosing on the opioids their family business manufactured, is told by a fellow resident of the Float Anxiety Abatement Center near Chicago, who calls himself the Prophet, that Oliver is central to establishing a new utopia to be started by children to save the species and the planet. Oliver joins the Prophet and some others in escaping from Float to realize the Prophet's vision. From the ominous sentence that opens the main narrative ("The summer our children began to kill themselves was the hottest in history"), the author creates an all-too-plausible dystopia rendered believable through matter-of-fact prose. Hawley makes this sing by combining the social commentary of a Margaret Atwood novel with the horrors of a Stephen King book. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House.

November 15, 2021
The young heir to a pharmaceutical fortune and his friends band together to bring down an evil billionaire in Hawley's near-future thriller. It's a few years after the Covid-19 pandemic, and things in America have not been going well. Political strife continues to worsen as climate change progresses, and all of a sudden teenagers start dying of suicide in droves. Simon Oliver's older sister, Claire, was one of these cases, overdosing on the very opioids produced by their family's company. In the months after Claire's death, Simon becomes so anxious his parents have him admitted to a high-end mental health facility for the children of the wealthy. There, a mysterious boy who goes by the name the Prophet convinces Simon to escape the hospital with a few other misfits. Louise, one such misfit, tells Simon of "the Wizard," a Jeffrey Epstein-like figure named E.L. Mobley. Like Epstein, Mobley is notorious for abusing young girls and getting away with it because he has too much money to be held accountable. The Prophet believes Mobley must be brought down, but what can a group of kids do against a vicious billionaire? Hawley is a TV veteran, and he knows how to quickly establish character, maintain pacing, and write excellent action scenes. But this very long book is stuffed with far too many characters, half-developed ideas, and asides from the author that would be more at home in an op-ed than a novel. Almost everyone who's mentioned gets a chapter from their own perspective, resulting in either a promising thread that goes nowhere or a passage that could easily have been skipped without losing anything pertinent to the story. Simultaneously too much and not enough.

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Starred review from November 1, 2021
It begins with the suicide of 15-year-old Simon's older sister, Claire, an act that presages a global wave of children's suicides, numbering 1,000 per day. Devastated by his sister's death, Simon is sent to Float, an adolescent center for anxiety. There he meets Louise, who is 15 and Black, and a strange boy named Paul, who is 14 and calls himself the Prophet, claiming he receives messages from God, one of which asserts that He has a mission for Simon--the boy will be instrumental in building a new utopia. With that purpose, the three teens escape from Float. En route to their destiny, they rescue a teenage girl, Bathsheba, from the so-called Wizard, billionaire E. I. Mobley, the sixth richest man in the world, who has a penchant for violating pubescent girls. Meanwhile, hordes of insurrectionists rise up to overthrow the government, launching a violent, epic Manichean war between good and evil. The apocalypse, it seems, is just around the corner. Yes, Hawley has written some of the most savage satire since Jonathan Swift, creating a ridiculous world in which only the young are viable. The plot-rich, cinematic story moves swiftly and compellingly, exciting reader interest and empathy. Anthem is truly an epic adventure.

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