This prolific American/Portugese author offers a frightening novel about the dumbing down of American society with the Mental Parity dogma becoming all-powerful in 2012 and suppressing any spoken or written comments that might offend, with the all consuming assumption that everyone is equally intelligent. The result is a lowering or abandonment of all standards and exams and the rise of unqualified people to the top in every field from medicine to engineering, teaching law and politics with disastrous consequences. Books such as Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot and many movies are banned because they portray differing levels of intelligence, and cannot even be mentioned.
Then a backlash develops with I.Q. tests reinstated and they are and used to determine who can vote, after a constitutional amendment.
Satire often requires exaggeration, and this book is no exception. Lifelong friendships are shattered because one person mentions something that is taboo, people lose their jobs and families and become homeless, and their children are removed for the same reason.
The writing about growing up in an isolated Jehovah’s Witness family and then being ostracized and disowned by them when she defies their world view is so detailed and insightful that it made me wonder if this was in part autobiographical. “When you are perfectly trapped within a bubble, there is no bubble.”
This is a frightening and grossly exaggerated book that is very well written and touches a sensitive nerve about the very real problem of political correctness.
4.5/5
Thanks, The Economist.
The Passionate Reader 