Unwind: Book Review and Discussion

I just finished reading Unwind by Neal Shusterman. This is a . . . Young Adult Dystopian novel that I threw on my shelf after someone mentioned in a review that the concept of "unwinding" was incredibly disturbing. I knew that because this was a YA novel, that my enjoyment would be curbed, but I also knew that there was potential for creativity when it came to terror, given that they can't really rely on the typical avenues of horror, like excessive gore, SA, and other adult trauma. This can be really hit or miss.

For this novel, the basic backstory is that the pro-life and pro-choice factions in America boiled over into a second Civil War. This culminated in a bloody stalemate, where both sides agreed to a compromise called "unwinding." Abortion is made illegal, but from the ages thirteen to seventeen, parents can choose to have their child "unwound." This means that they are disassembled and all of their pieces are used as organ donations. As long as the latter is the case, then the child can be considered alive, at least legally speaking. Technically, they have not been killed. I originally wanted to read it because of the unwinding concept. It wasn't until I actually picked it up that I learned that it was supposed to be connected to the abortion debate. I found that strange, and I still do, but we will get to that.

I think much of what I want to say about this book has to do with the unwinding concept, its execution, and its relationship to the themes. As for the rest of the book, there isn't all that much to say. It's YA, so I have the standard YA criticisms, and other than that, it wasn't that bad. As a consequence, I think this review will be more of a discussion than a review.

Unwinding

The concept of unwinding was unironically the most disturbing thing that I have read in quite some time. Not only that, but it struck up numerous fascinating questions about the nature of consciousness and the soul that I think are profoundly interesting. I was only planning on reading this first book, but I think I might actually consider reading the rest of the series, depending on how the next one goes. Don't count on it, though. I'm not reading it for the thrills or the action.

Returning my attention to the concept of unwinding, I was just so captivated by the idea of having people "unwound." As some of the characters in the book ask amongst themselves, would you rather be unwound or killed? What actually happens to you when you are unwound? The novel provides the perfect blend of nothing and tangential asides that provoke you uncomfortably. The character of Ci-Fy provides a perfect example of the latter that makes you wonder if the justification of unwinding might actually have a basis. In fact, there is a heartwarming scene at the end of the book involving a certain character with a bad heart that also makes you wonder . . .

That said, I'm not sure that was Shusterman's point.

Theme

This leads to the next point I wanted to make. Oftentimes, people introduce interesting concepts into stories, and it is nothing more than that. The next level is when they connect that concept to a theme and use that to say something. This tries to do that, but I'm not entirely convinced that it works.

This is the connection to the abortion debate.

The opening page makes plain this connection, and I was immediately caught off guard. I just could not see how a debate about abortion access or the fetus' right to life could lead to something like this. To be fair, the worldbuilding is fleshed out as you read it, and the way I described it above is more informed by the fleshed out view later on than what was given in the beginning. The worldbuilding is, in a word, "weak." But that is another angle that I will get to.

By the end, I could see some connection. There was a certain irony in the result that America had ultimately settled on in the war. They fought over choice and life, and by the end of it, both choice and life were taken away. This is according to the triumphant speech by Connor, one of the main characters, at the end of the book.

The problem is that unwinding is so abstracted from abortion as a topic that it kind of loses sight of what abortion is about, at least in part. One aspect of the story is that women are allowed to "stork" their children, even as abortion is illegal. This means they can dump a baby on a doorstep and the family burdened with the baby is legally required to take that baby as their own. You could say that this is a kind of choice that women are given, but that idea isn't really explored; further, there is only a tangential connection to unwinding (storked babies could be unwound later on). More broadly, the whole question of women having to carry pregnancies to term is never touched upon. All the focus is on unwinding.

I'm not in disagreement with the focus. The problem is the thematic connection to abortion. I was looking through some reviews on goodreads, and I actually saw some people rate the book down after thinking on it because they thought it was pro-life propaganda. The notion strikes me as absurd, given what I mentioned above, but it also highlights a problem of people missing the point. There are interesting questions posed here, but what the hell do they have to do with abortion?

The book forces you to ask questions about the nature of consciousness and the soul. What happens to the "I" that thinks when a person is unwound? Where does the soul go? Is it spread out, or in one localized spot? Can it die in parts? Aside from that, the aforementioned worldbuilding started to click in place when it was mentioned that people find the use of the teens' organs and other body parts too useful to give up the program. That makes sense. To my mind, all this backstory and thematic connection to abortion is a distraction. Maybe there are loose connections. There is some truth to the idea that there is neither choice nor life in this dystopia, but it misses the fundamental point that it is the mother's choice that is being protected in debates about abortion. In Connor's speech, he was talking about the teens' right to choose.

I think the abortion connection should have been abandoned entirely. It honestly feels tangential to what really matters. Unwinding should have been introduced in a different way. Perhaps as a side effect that no one really wanted, but they were all forced to settle with, in their desperate chase for perfection. They required more and more organ transplants, which forced more and more sacrifices. There is still the question of why it's teens being used, but the framing hand of YA is strong. It could also have been a class system where only children of the underclass are chosen, though I'm actually glad he sidestepped that one with this book. That trope is overused.

Prejudices

My prejudices against YA are going to be on full display here, because I can't help but think that in the hands of a writer of adult fiction, this book would have been far more compelling. I want to rip from this book so badly, but I can't just lift the idea of unwinding entirely, haha. I don't know if the abortion debate connection was borne out of his desire to write a YA novel, I think the author just writes YA, but I do think YA novels tend to be pretty weak when it comes to their internal logic.

Conclusion

Unwind is a conceptually interesting experiment, and even terrifying in some places. However, the backstory and the thematic connection it tries to make also weighs it down. (It's also YA). I think I will give it a 6/10.

Video: https://youtu.be/TH2Uyyvtbwo