I have no idea how I came into possession of this novel. I found it on my shelf, with no receipt to indicate purchase, no penciled price on the flyleaf to suggest a used book store, and it seems to have no publisher, so presumably was self-published by the author. It did win the Kirkus Star, a presumably distinguished literary award I've never heard of.
The novel is a future dystopia, set in a time when the corporations have truly taken over the world, such that everything and everyone is their property, and profit is the only acceptable and moral motive. Self-interest is the highest good. In essence, it is as if every worse-case scenario of a liberal's nightmare vision of a corporate future has come to be. It seems to be a book written to counter the horrors of Ayn Rand (the luxury neighborhood is called "The Galt"), and Soutter's prose are regrettably no smoother than her tortured attempts at writing. Our hero is a midlevel office drone for the Ackerman Brothers corporation, which is among the stronger players in a world where the "social contract" has been thoroughly rejected. He has been a more or less happy drone for years, when I reads a story about a woman who objects to the capitalist system, where those who interfere with profits are rendered to make soap, in order that the corporations can recoup some of their losses. He is a naive, recent convert to the notion of socialism, and his ruminations often read like late-night freshman bull-sessions:
Competition exists in facets of life, but that doesn't make it the sum of life. You can see the world through rose-colored glasses, but that does not make the world rouge, even if you live a lifetime that way. Violence is the only possible conclusion to capitalism.Would I recommend this one? If you have one of those annoying friends who is always going on about Rand (or any of the more current libertarians who follow her), who keeps trying to get you to read Atlas Shrugged, then buy a copy of this for him for his next birthday.
