Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium (Delirium #1)
By Lauren Oliver
Publisher: HarperCollins

To Sum It Up: The discovery that love is a disease has led scientists to develop a cure for it. Lena Haloway will soon be eighteen, the age at which she will be old enough to undergo the procedure that eradicates amor deliria nervosa. At first, Lena is looking forward to being safe from the effects of this horrible condition. The last thing that she ever expects to do is fall in love, but when it happens, Lena will do anything to avoid being “cured.”

Review: The world that Lauren Oliver creates in Delirium is terrifying. Well, it gave me a good scare, at least. What haunted me the most about this particular dystopian society was how the “cure” for love affected relationships. Couples do not marry for love; they are matched based on government evaluations of each individual, which take place shortly before undergoing the procedure. Lena’s aunt and uncle, with whom she lives, show little more than a polite interest in one another’s conversation at the dinner table. Even more disturbing is how mothers, including Lena’s sister, Rachel, seem to just go through the motions with their children. They possess enough maternal instinct to provide basic care for their offspring, but they’re emotionally detached from them. I found this both appalling and tragic.

For me, the best part of this book was the world-building. Oliver’s writing style perfectly captures the sense of fear and suffocation that this society, in which routine patrols are made to check that no one is displaying too much affection, evokes. I liked how Oliver cleverly reinforced this vision by placing excerpts from this world’s literary works, such as The Book of Shhh, at the beginning of each chapter.

Lena took a while to grow on me as a heroine. Given what happened to her mother, who underwent the procedure three times and still wasn’t cured, and the fact that she’s always been taught that love is something to be eliminated, I can’t fault Lena for initially welcoming the cure. I truly began to root for her once Alex entered the picture, and she realized that there was so much more to life than what she’d been led to believe.

The growing attraction between Lena and Alex develops at a very believable pace. I’m not into insta-love and was relieved that it didn’t turn up here. I really liked Alex and hope to find out more about his role with the other Invalids, those who live outside of governmental jurisdiction and don’t believe in being cured, in the next book. And I’ll definitely be reading the next book.

All in All: If my stack of library books hadn’t already been so tall, I would have borrowed the sequel, Pandemonium, right away. I really need to know how the requisite cliffhanger in Delirium gets resolved!