Let's Finish Unwind (please)

Okay, I'ma plow through the rest of this book, because jeez.

Chapter 56

Connor is in the Unwind dorm and he is sad. He is not a hero, just a regular guy, and he cannot save anyone. Poor Connor.

Roland shows up. They have a big fight. Roland almost kills Connor, and then doesn't. Roland is sad to learn he is not actually a killer. Poor Roland.


Chapter 57

Lev is in the Unwind dorm for tithes, which is much nicer than the regular Unwind dorms. They have a pool! They have gourmet food! They get nice clothing and their own move theater.

This makes no sense, of course. Given that no one comes back from these Harvest Camps, why spend money on all this luxury? Why keep any of these kids alive for longer than necessary? Why not just harvest them as they show up? Maybe we have to wait until specific organs are ordered? Like, we need a kidney type O+ here in Amarillo?

But given the huge population in our future world, and given that -- apparently -- people are getting transplants for things like having ears that are too big, wouldn't the requirement for organs and other parts be huge? It's huge now, and we don't use transplants except as a last resort.

ANYWAY.

Lev is not sad. Lev is angry. All the other tithes are in prayer meetings.

I just want to note again that this 'religion people send one in ten of all their children to be harvested' makes literally no sense. I'm assuming religious people are supposed to be the ones who fought on the pro-life side of teh Great Civil War II. You can't get less pro-life than sending your kids off to be murdered. I mean, I get that 'pro-life' people don't actually care about life. I get that it's actually about controlling the poors and keeping them poor. But it's a huge leap from 'poor people shouldn't be able to control their own bodies' to 'let's murder our own kids.'

ANYWAY.

Lev is angry because he has lost his faith in God. He prays, but his heart has been hardened.

Lev is exercising, because his medical tests showed his triglycerides are high. He can't be harvested until they're normal, I guess. Jokes on the Harvest Camp, though, bc ACTUALLY Lev has taken some drug that makes it SEEM like his triglycerides are high.

Lev's fellow anarchist terrorist kids are wizard scientists, I guess.

He and Blaine and Mai meet up. They are fellow anarchist terrorists. Mai is worried because Risa saw her. What will Risa think? (Why would Risa just think Mai has been sent here to be Unwound, same as her?) Blaine says not to worry, and that they should do "it" tomorrow. He gives them both detonators.

Lev reflects on what they're about to do. He knows it is wrong, but he doesn't care. Because he is ANGRY, see, and his heart is HARD.

Remember the terrorists we met back in chapter whatever, the chapter about the high school? The terrorists who were called Clappers? This is what Lev and his Fellow Chaotic Evil Anarchist Terrorists plan to do. Apparently you put detonators on your hands, and then you clap, and...something blows up?

I suspect Neal knows as little about ordnance as he does about pro-choice people.


Chapter 58

Connor and Risa meet in the girl's bathroom to make out.

I'm serious. That's what happens in this chapter. What the actual hell.


Chapter 59

Roland is sent for harvesting. He has a rare blood type, AB-, so his parts are in high demand.


Chapter 60

A two paragraph chapter which very solemnly tells us that how Unwinding happens is a Deep Secret. But it takes three hours, and 12 surgeons. Which seems like a lot, but okay.


Chapter 61

Roland gets unwound. This is actually an effective chapter, and pretty well written. It's based on a ridiculous premise, though, which is that kids being unwound are kept conscious through the entire procedure.

“This is it, then,” Roland says. “You’re putting me under?” 

Although he can’t see her mouth beneath her surgical mask, he can see the smile in her eyes. “Not at all,” she says. “By law, we’re required to keep you conscious through the entire procedure.” The nurse takes his hand. “You have a right to know everything that’s happening to you, every step of the way.” 

Although this allows Neal to give us a dramatic narrative of Roland being taken apart while being fully aware of every step, it makes absolutely no sense. Why would the "law" required consciousness in these kids? Why would the surgeons want them to be conscious? It makes no sense. That's not how humans behave.

So -- effective, but silly.


Chapter 62

Lev gets ready to be a Chaotic Evil Terrorist.

But first a preacher takes the Tithes to a tree which has been grafted with all sorts of other trees -- one branch is from a peach tree, another from a cherry tree, and so on. It's a metaphor, get it?

Lev quotes Proverbs 11:2, saying being proud at having created such a tree is a big sin. It's a metaphor, get it?

The preacher is humbled by Lev's knowledge of scripture. He takes his flock back to the Tithe area, and on the way Connor confronts Lev -- he doesn't get a chance to say anything, but that's not what this is about. This is about Lev finding out that Connor is going to be unwound -- today!

He finds his fellow Chaotic Evil Terrorists and insists on moving up their terrorist act to today. He gets them to agree, but then ---

THEN the religious counselors bring Lev in for a prayer session. Because he seems so troubled.

OH NO. Will Lev miss the rendezvous for the Chaotic Evil Terrorist Act?


Chapter 63

We're in the point of view of a Harvest Camp guard. He is moody and sad because he hates being a guard, but it's the only job he can get, since he's was raised in a State Home, like Risa. Life is so unfair. Poor victim of economic anxiety.

Lev's fellow Chaotic Evil Terrorist show up, pretending they're here to take food up to the band. OH NO. Risa is in the band!


Chapter 64

The guards show up to take Connor to be Unwound. One mentions that he has pretty brown eyes, and that a buddy of his is looking for brown eyes, because his girlfriend doesn't like blue eyes.

Connor is appalled and terrified, but he goes with them, determined to walk to the Harvest Shop with dignity.


Chapter 65

Neal starts this one with a solemn little homily on how suicide bombers (which is what Clappers are) are deluded. Terrorism is Bad, m'kay?

Then Blaine and Mai explode -- Blaine because he's hit by a guard, and Mai because she detonates herself. They have liquid explosives in their BLOOD, y'all. (Oh my God.)

Before Mai dies, she thinks about how and why she and Blaine killed the Goldens. It's because they were insufficiently respectful when her boyfriend died. So she's angry and her heart is hard.

Lev doesn't clap. He can't bring himself to do it. Because he's Really Good After All.

The building blows up with Connor inside and Risa on the roof. Connor staggers, mangled and bleeding, from the wreckage. Everyone in the camp decides Connor blew up the building -- he's already their hero, because he's the Akron AWOL. Their glee at his Terrorist Act (as they think it is) sparks a rebellion, and all the kids rise up and begin tasing the guards.

Lev takes care of poor mangled Connor.


Chapter 66

Connor wakes up in the hospital. Local ER personnel have conspired to pretend he's the guard from the camp, Elvis Robert Mullard, and 19 years old. So he's safe from being unwound. Good news!

But they've given him an eye and an arm from Unwound kids. And the arm...drum-roll...is Roland's arm.

Bad news.

Chapter 67

Risa also survived. (I know, it's such a surprise! Also, most of the other kids from the Harvest Camp escaped in the riot and have not yet been recovered.) But she is paralyzed from the waist down. Bad news!

But in Neal's world, although we can Unwind 13 year olds, there's a law against Unwinding the disabled. (What?) So Risa is safe now. Good news!

They offered to transplant an Unwind's spine into her -- then she wouldn't be paralyzed anymore, and then she could be Unwound again. Oddly enough, she refused this deal.

Connor comes to see Risa and tells her about his new identity. They're both going to live and they wuv each other.

Then Risa notices his arm -- and whose arm it is. "I will never touch you with this hand," Connor promises.

But Risa kisses his Evil Hand and puts it to her face. "It's your hand," she says, "Roland would never touch me like this."

Then we get the worst paragraph in the book:

Connor smiles, and Risa takes a moment to look down at the shark on his wrist. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No—the soul of a man. 

Oh my God.


Chapter 68

Lev also survived, and is being held in some sort of Super-Max Federal Medical Center while they de-tox his explosive blood.

Pastor Dan, from way back in like chapter five, comes to visit, and we learn CyFi, our magical negro, is leading a movement to stop Unwinding. CyFi is going to save Eva Lev!

Also Lev is famous. His picture is on the cover of all the news magazines, because he's the Clapper who didn't Clap. Also, he rescued three people from the building destroyed by his fellow Chaotic Evil Terrorists.

He's a hero, not a zero!

“I have to believe that things happen for a reason," [Pastor Dan says.] "Your kidnapping, your becoming a clapper, your refusing to clap”—he glances at the magazine cover in his hand—“it’s all led to this. For years, Unwinds were just faceless kids that no one wanted—but now you’ve put a face on unwinding.” 

Yeah, okay, Pastor Dan.

Again, no. This is not how people work. Everyone in this world must know someone who has been Unwound. Why would they suddenly care just because Lev didn't blow himself up?

Also, good news for Lev -- they don't Unwind Clappers, because "that stuff" never gets entirely out of your system. Good news.

In which case, wouldn't Lev have to stay here in this Super Max Federal Medical Center for the rest of his life? Bad news.

But nah. Pastor Dan says Lev will get a few years in juvey, and a few years of House Arrest, and although his parents don't want him back, his brother Marcus is willing to take him in.

Also Pastor Dan has left that Evil Church, the one that supports Unwinding. Now he's following a "different" God.

Lev's hard heart unhardens. "Do you think maybe I can believe in that God too?" he asks.

Cue heart-warming music.


Chapter 69

This book has 69 chapters. Heh. 69. (In other news, I am 12 years old.)

We find out why the Admiral was collecting people with his son's parts. Not so he can put Humphrey back together again!

Naw, he is adopting everyone who has a part of his son. Aw! More heart-warming music.

Also, it's useful that they're all under 18. Why didn't any adults get bits of Humphrey?

Also the Admiral and his new 750 kids are all going to Fight to End Unwinding.

Meanwhile, the Graveyard (now called Purgatory) has a new leader. Guess who!

That's right. Connor is now in charge. (Risa is also here, playing a piano that showed up out of somewhere.)

Connor says this to the new crop of runaway Unwinds that show up:

“I don’t know what happens to our consciousness when we’re unwound,” says Connor. “I don’t even know when that consciousness starts. But I do know this.” He pauses to make sure all of them are listening. “We have a right to our lives!”

The kids go wild. 

“We have a right to choose what happens to our bodies!” 

Huh.

Also, THE END.

Thank God.

Neal Schusterman's Unwind Ch 39-47

Here comes series of "chapters" that are all two to three paragraphs long. I think Neal is attempting to create drama. If so, nah.

Chapter 39

Ronald's point of view. He gets a note from Connor saying I KNOW WHAT YOU DID, and saying meet me at the Fed-Ex Jet or ELSE.

Ronald goes.


Chapter 40

Connor hides in the jet and then trips Ronald and locks him in a crate while he questions him. These crates are starting to bother me, frankly. They're not shipping crates -- which is how we'd usually expect to find items packed for transport. They appear to be cartoon crates, like those in which Coyote received his Acme Rockets.

Anyway, Connor shoots air-holes in the crate, to show us that unlike SOME PEOPLE he doesn't plan to suffocate Ronald. No one hears the gunshots, by the way.


Chapter 41

Undefined Unwinds have been searching for Emby, thinking he is lost in the desert, I guess? (Emby is the one who had the lung of the Admiral's son, who was sent to the Admiral's wife.) They find the graves of the Goldens, and decide the Admiral killed them.

An angry mob heads for the Admiral's jet.


Chapter 42

The Admiral has sent for Risa to bring him some aspirin. His shoulder hurts. (Neal is hinting heavily that the Admiral is actually having a heart attack.) Risa takes his blood pressure, "just in case."


Chapter 43

The mob attacks the jet. Risa fights them off -- boy, can she throw a punch! -- and locks them out. The Admiral's heart is racing, and his shoulder hurts worse. Is that an anvil I see before me?

The mob begin ripping the jet to shreds with their bare hands. (No, really.) Among other things, they tear out the power line that goes to the generator. The jet "quickly begins to bake in the broiling sun."

Is it baking or broiling, Neal? Make up your mind.


Chapter 44

Connor is interrogating Roland, locked in the Acme Crate. He wants Roland to admit to killing the Goldens, and also Emby. Roland says swear words. Connor says they're not leaving until Roland confesses.  Roland says worse swear words. (Not on the page. Neal just tells us Roland is saying bad words, he doesn't tell us the bad words.)


Chapter 45

It's 100 degrees in the jet. Risa notes that the Admiral does not look good. Outside, the mob has finished tearing up the Admiral's jet and are now tearing all the rest of the airplanes apart, also setting fire to them.

The helicopter pilot notices the flames and flies in to see what's up. He wonders if his deeds have led to this. Apparently the pilot killed the Goldens? Maybe?

When he lands, the mob turns on him.  He thinks this is a good thing. Dude.


Chapter 46

Roland is still not confessing. Hayden comes to get Connor to stop the mob. Connor rushes off to do it. He finds the pilot being kicked to death by the mob, and pulls them off him. (Why don't they attack Connor? Plot armor, I guess.)

The pilot confesses to killing the Goldens, with his dying breath.

Connor rushes to the Admiral's jet. Somehow he knows Risa is in there, even though he's been torturing interrogating Roland all morning. He tears the mob off the jet, screaming that they all deserve to be Unwound.

This shocks everyone into calming the fuck down, and Connor leads a crew to get the Admiral's jet open. Risa falls into his arms. So romantic.

Sadly, the Admiral is having a heart attack, and the only way to get him to a hospital is via the helicopter. But oh no the pilot is dead.

Luckily he was training someone else to fly. Unluckily, that someone is....Roland.

Who is probably not in the mood to be helpful right now.


Chapter 47

Neal finesses the conversation between Connor and Roland, in which Connor talks Roland into flying the helicopter (and never mind that we're supposed to believe the pilot trained a 14 year old to fly a helicopter in like 10 days). This chapter is in the POV of an ER resident who is on duty when Connor, Risa, and Roland fly the Admiral in for help.

The Admiral refuses a heart transplant. The resident says he's crazy. He insists. Connor suggests that she do "whatever" doctors used to do before Unwinds started supplying them with unlimited hearts. Fine, the resident sighs, and stomps toward the ER.

PLOT TWIST: Roland follows her and rats Conner and Risa out as runaway Unwinds. The ER residents calls the Unwind Police on them.

Why isn't Roland afraid of being arrested himself? Also, why don't Connor and Risa run for it right away?

Excellent questions!

Neil Schusterman's Unwind Chapters 35 -38

More Unwind! The story takes a turn, and I am not quite sure what to make of it.

Chapter 35

We're in Lev's point of view. Schusterman uses this chapter to establish that Lev has been radicalized. I would have expected that to have been because of what happened with Cyrus -- Lev meeting parents that sold their kid into the Unwind program because he was too much trouble, rather than a Holy Tithe to God, as he thought he was.

But no. Schusterman says hanging around with Unwinds is what has radicalized him. Unwinds are liars and trouble-makers, and so now Lev is a liar and a trouble-maker.

Given that Connor and Risa have also been hanging around with Unwinds, and neither of them have been radicalized, I'm not sure I agree with this police work, but okay.

The point is, Lev has arrived at the Graveyard and he immediately finds his way to a group of agitators. Or performance artists, maybe? They're a disparate group of Unwinds whose mission is to cause trouble. They recognize that their situation is unjust, and their reaction to it is to create chaos.

They're chaotic evil.

They don't have a plan. They don't have a goal. They just want to cause harm, to creative havoc, in order to get revenge for the injustice done to them.

It doesn't make much sense, but then they are all thirteen years old.

Lev joins up:

“All right, I’m in.” Back at home Lev always felt part of something larger than himself. Until now, he hadn’t realized how much he missed that feeling. 

Religion, terrorist group -- no real difference, am I right?


Chapter 36

Back to Risa's point of view. She's studying medical and anatomy textbooks in the three planes which the Admiral has set up as study centers. No teachers, no exams, just books. According to Schusterman, it's this lack of teachers and books that cause so many Unwinds to spend their time in the study jets. See, because without teachers to destroy a student's desire to learn, kids are delighted to educate themselves.

There's no internet in this world, apparently. All the books are hard-copy books. Also, none of these kids have phones. Connor did have one, back in the early chapters of the book, but it appears to have vanished.

Risa has been working as a medic in the Graveyard, but she wants to know more about the subject. She's also thinking ahead -- when she's 18 and can leave, she's thinking she might join the military and study as a medic with them.

So far Risa's the only character I actually like in this book.

Side note: for a country that's no longer at war, this Future America devotes a sizable portion of its population to the military.

One day Risa finds Connor studying in a jet, which so unusual she can't think what it means. Turns out Connor is reading about Criminology. He makes Risa promise she won't become one of the new Goldens.

A-HA. Connor suspects the Admiral had the Goldens killed.

Risa and Connor kiss, which frankly comes out of nowhere. I've never seen two people with less chemistry.

Lev comes into the medical jet to be treated for sunburn, and Risa wonders what happened to the sweet boy she used to know. Lev says he has better things to do these days. Risa asks him if he still thinks about God.

Lev looks uneasy, and then shrugs it off.

I think Schusterman is saying the real cause of Lev's radicalization is his Anger at God. Lev is rebelling -- but against God!!

I assume he learns the error of his ways and rededicates his life to Jesus soon.

Meanwhile, another work call/slave market is held. Lev volunteers along with the other members of his Terrorist Cell to be sold to a job working the pipeline in Alaska.

Apparently this near future still runs on oil. That's disappointing.

Also, I guess Lev's Terrorist Cell is aiming to cause an oil spill. Chaos!


Chapter 37

We're in the point of view of Emby, a kid we met back in the warehouse. He's got asthma and his parents bought him a lung from an Unwind kid, before they died and his aunt sold him to be Unwound himself.

Now the Admiral has cozied up to him. Emby is too stupid to wonder why. The Admiral calls him to Air Force One and sends him off in a black sedan with two Men in Black. Someone wants to meet you, the Admiral says. She's been looking for you for a long time, the Admiral says.

It's his wife.

Why is she looking for Emby? Well, actually she's just looking for....his lung.

Yes, the Admiral and his wife are the mother of Humphrey Dunfree, the kid who everyone thinks is an urban legend, the one whose parents sent him to be unwound, and who are now gathering up all his pieces again.

The legend says it's so they can re-assemble him. That gives the Admiral a motive for running the graveyard, but yeah, if that's what he's doing, yikes.

Emby is hauled away, squeaking in protest. The Admiral sits studying the picture of his Unwound son, deeply pleased with himself.


Chapter 38

The Unwinds at the Graveyard realize Emby is missing. Roland tries to convince everyone that the Admiral sent him to be Unwound, so that he could use Emby's parts to fix his own defects (bad teeth, bad joints, baldness).

Connor knows the Admiral would never use parts from an Unwind, and he thinks Roland killed Emby to inflame his followers. The Admiral encourages him in this theory, since he can't admit what he actually did with Emby. He also tells Connor that Roland probably killed the Goldens as well.

Connor, like the dupe he is, accepts this theory uncritically.

Why is this idiot supposed to be the hero of the book? And where is Risa while all this is going on? Why isn't she here slapping Connor up the side of his head and telling him to use his brain while he still has one?

Too busy being the love interest, I guess.

We're 70% through the book. The main action better happen soon.

More Fan Art -- Connor and Risa smooch

Neal Schusterman's Unwind Chapters 32 -34

More Unwind Fan Art

We get a little more back story in this section, but it's as bizarre as the rest of this narrative.

This is Part 5 of the novel, and Schusterman starts it off with a tiny excerpt that explains what an airline graveyard is, I guess for those of us who live in caves and don't know what one is.

Chapter 32

This chapter is just a list of rules for the Graveyard, which the Admiral makes every Unwind kid memorize. None of them seem unreasonable, for a guy taking care of 432 kids in the middle of the desert. For example, boys don't live with girls, everyone has to work, no teen rebellion. The only one that might give us pause is Rule # 3: My Way is the Only Way. The Admiral is the boss, with no checks on his power or authority. Except, I guess, the check of teens rebelling, which frankly -- give the origin of some of the Unwinds -- is something he should be worrying about.

I can't decide if we're supposed to read the Admiral as a villain or not. Maybe it will come clear later.

Chapter 33

Our main characters get assigned jobs. Risa is a medic, Connor does repairs. Roland, cast as our most apparent villain, gets assigned to helicopter maintenance. (The Graveyard has a helicopter, plus a pilot who flies the Admiral around.)

They're assigned these jobs by the Goldens, a group of five kids who are the Admiral's second in command. Don't get attached to these kids, btw.

Chapter 34

Connor's point of view. He notices Roland building a coalition of kids around himself, via his evil manipulative ways. Connor builds a coalition of kids around himself too, but that's okay, because he does it with his natural integrity.

Also Connor is changing. Why? Because Risa. He thinks of Risa before he acts, and this makes him act more carefully and with more forethought. See? All bad boys need is a good woman to civilize them. (Also, that's the job of women: civilizing bad boys.)

We also find out about "Work calls," which are basically when the Admiral sells Unwind kids as slave labor to people outside the Graveyard. It's all work like cleaning houses and clearing land. The kids do not get paid, though they do get hidden from the Unwind Authorities.

Roland starts a rumor that the Admiral is also selling kids to the Unwind authorities, and benefiting by getting organs and such himself. Frankly, it's a believable rumor.

Lev is brought in with a new transport of Unwinds. Connor punches him and then hugs him. Later, Lev warns Connor not to punch him again. Connor says he'll only punch Lev when he has it coming. Lev accepts these terms.

Violence is justified if someone misbehaves, apparently.

The Admiral pretends his coffee pot is broken (he lives in an old Air Force One plane) as an excuse to get Connor to come "fix" it -- really to get enlist Connor as one of his spies. He shows Connor the bodies of the Goldens, and claims "someone" among the Unwind kids has killed them. A rebellion is brewing!

Or the Admiral killed these kids himself, a possibility that doesn't occur to Connor, and seems hella more likely to me. Connor suspects Roland, but how would Roland kill five kids who are older and better connected than he is?

The Admiral thinks Connor's constant fighting is just fine. He's using violence to "fix" things, see, so that's okay.

This comment does not set off alarms in Connor's mind. I don't know if we're supposed to think Connor is really smart or really stupid.

We find out the Admiral had his own son unwound.  Once again, this sets off no alarms in Connor's mind. Instead, he feels pity for the poor Admiral who "had" to kill his own kid.

We also get some background about the "Heartland War," the big war between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice people which led to people being Unwound.

“There were dark days leading up to the war. Everything that we think defines right and wrong was being turned upside down. On one side, people were murdering abortion doctors to protect the right to life, while on the other side people were getting pregnant just to sell their fetal tissue….It was beyond madness!"

Wow, yeah, that does sound crazy. And I suspect this is one of the places which made the Library Journal call this book "fair and balanced."

But in fact, of course, while it is true that "Pro-Life" people are killing doctors and nurses and bombing women's clinics, no one on the Pro-Choice side is actually getting pregnant just to sell their fetal tissue. That's not just a lie, it's a vile and ridiculous lie.

Anyway, the Admiral says he helped write the "Bill of Life" because it stopped the Heartland War.

We brokered a peace by bringing both sides to the table. Then we proposed the idea of unwinding, which would terminate unwanteds without actually ending their lives. We thought it would shock both sides into seeing reason—that they would stare at each other across the table and someone would blink. But nobody blinked. The choice to terminate without ending life—it satisfied the needs of both sides. 

This is insulting to both sides of this argument. It assumes that "Pro-Choice" people just want to kill children, and don't care how it happens. And it assumes "Pro-Life" people are fine with killing 13 year olds if those 13 years deserve it.... which, well, okay, that's not too far off the mark. But still.

The Admiral says this is why he had to send his son to be Unwound -- because he helped write the bill, and because his son was a trouble-making kid. The sort, the Admiral adds, that we would have once sent to the military.

I mean, boys will be boys, right.

But now, the Admiral says sadly, we just Unwind such kids. Boys cannot be boys anymore. It is so sad. (This does not fit with all the kids we've seen being raised to go into the Army, but go off, I guess.)

The Admiral says in memory of his son, he started this Graveyard, to save Unwinds. He says he's saved more than a 1000 kids so far. Given that there are 432 kids at the Graveyard now, this is also a red flag, but Connor doesn't notice anything. I guess he's bad at math?

Also we find out Connor knows some things about guns. How? Who knows.

We're 60% through the book. At least things are happening again now.

Neal Schusterman's Unwind Chapters 26 - 31

Schusterman has this book divided into 'parts,' and each part starts with a quotation he's found somewhere.

Part Four, which we have now reached, starts with a note from eBay. Apparently in 2001, someone tried to auction off their soul on eBay. eBay took the offering down, providing the explanation that either souls didn't exist, in which case this was fraud; or they did exist, and thus -- because auctioning off parts of the human body is against eBay's policy -- the auction violated the policy.

It's a clever bit of reasoning, and I guess Schusterman includes it because in Unwind, people's body parts get auctioned off? Maybe. Who knows?

Chapter 26

We're back with Lev, but this chapter comes from the point of view of the owner of a pawnshop. The one thing this chapter makes very clear is that Schusterman has never been in a pawn shop, and knows nothing about poor people and why they pawn items.

Here's why people pawn items, usually: it's two or three days until payday, and some emergency has come up. Maybe the car needs a water pump. Maybe the kid needs antibiotics. They need a couple hundred dollars, and they have no one to borrow it from. So they pawn something pricey that they own -- a nice shotgun, for instance, or grandma's wedding ring.

Mostly these things are reclaimed when the people get paid, though sometimes there's not enough money to get them back in time. Pawnshops are like the pay-day lender for people who are broke but have kept a few nice things around.

Schusterman thinks people come to pawn shops because they're junkies, and also I guess bums. It's illegal to sell things you don't own at a pawnshop, just FYI, and the pawnshop owner won't let you pawn things unless you have a valid ID.

ANYWAY: The pawn shop owner is impressed by Lev, since he's not a junkie bum. But he doesn't want to buy the fancy diamond necklace that Lev has to pawn (an item stolen by CyFi), since buying stolen goods is illegal.

Lev explains to him how he can get away with buying the stolen necklace. Lev knows more about running a pawnshop than the pawnshop owner does. Which makes perfect sense, given that he's the sheltered son of rich conservative Evangelicals. They always know about pawn shops.

Blah, blah, blah, Lev sucker-punches the guy and steals all the money in his safe, but he leaves the necklace behind, because he's not Evil, I guess.

Kind of a pointless chapter.


Chapter 27

Back in Conner's POV. Another sort of pointless chapter.

The Unwind kids at the Underground Railway stop get packed up in crates and flown out. The plane is being flown to an airplane graveyard. It's abandoned there with the kids still in crates, but don't worry, people come to get them out.

There is a very elaborate explanations of the details of all this, which is fine, except it makes no sense. Obviously the pilots are part of the Underground Railway, since they're loading this cargo into a plane that's going to the graveyard. Why not just load the kids in the plane and fly them out? Especially since it turns out that some of the kids die, suffocating in the crates.

Anyway, while he's in this crate with three other runaways, Connor and the other kids have a long discussion about whether being Unwound kills you or not, and also what happens to your soul when you're Unwound.

Hayden, one of the kids, suggests that people who are Unwound don't have souls. God always knew they'd be Unwound, he explains, so they were never given a soul. Like unborn babies, he says, except another kid is outraged, since unborn babies do have souls, from the moment they're conceived. It's the law, he says.

Connor says the law is an ass. He says unborn babies don't have souls. He says when they're born, that's when they get souls.

A kid named Diego agrees with him, though everyone else is outraged. Diego says that the mother loving the baby is what gives it a soul. Connor says what about Storked Babies, don't they have souls? Not unless someone loves them, Diego says.

I think this is the part that made people say this book was "balanced." Schusterman lets someone say that souls exist from the time the sperm meets the egg, but then he goes on to have our point of view character, and this Diego, say something different. The final answer, though, is given by Hayden, the rich kid whose parents got him braces before they shipped him off to be Unwound.

Hayden says he doesn't know when the soul enters the body. Everyone agrees that's the best answer.


Chapter 28

Risa's point of view. We're at the airplane graveyard -- which is just called the Graveyard -- and runaway kids are milling about, being organized by other kids, these kids wearing khaki clothing. "Army surplus," one of the kids tells Risa. "Stolen clothes for stolen souls."

So I guess we're going with Unwinds having souls then.

Blah blah blah, Risa hears some kids died during the trip, suffocating in one of the crates. She's afraid one of them might be Connor, and realizes how sad she would be if he's dead. Schusterman tries to build up some tension here, except we already know Connor survived to land in the Graveyard, so it's just dull.

She finds Connor. Surprise, he's alive. Risa doesn't fling herself into his arms, but she wants to.

A man named the Admiral shows up in a golf cart. He's clearly military, Risa thinks, though she doesn't tell us how she learned to recognize 'clearly military' guys. He's around 60, and was in the Heartland War, the one that led to the Unwind Amendment.

His uniform is blue. Risa can't remember whether that was the color for the Pro-Choice or the Pro-Life side, and then realizes it doesn't matter -- after all, both sides lost.

The Admiral says they will stay at the Graveyard until they are 18.

(After you're 18, it's apparently illegal to Unwind you, which really makes no sense. Why would they not -- for instance -- be harvesting organs from criminals of any age? If we've got a fat market in organs, why not profit off people of any age? I know it's because this is a YA novel, and Schusterman wants to make kids the victims, but this is some terrible world-building, frankly.)

The Admiral says running away, as they have done, is illegal, but the Graveyard isn't a law-free zone. They will follow the law -- his law.

“We are a community here," [the Admiral says] "You will learn the rules and you will follow them, or you will face the consequences, as in any society. This is not a democracy; it is a dictatorship. I am your dictator. This is a matter of necessity. It is the most effective way to keep you hidden, healthy, and whole.” 

I hope Schusterman meant this to be disquieting, because it is.

So far the Admiral seems fairly benevolent, and he does make sure the kids have water before he marches them off toward...somewhere.


Chapter 29

Back to Lev. He and CyFi are now entering Joplin, MO, which is the town where the kid in his brain came from -- the Unwind whose temporal lobe CyFi has. This kid is somehow compelling CyFi to come home to Joplin.

I hope there's something the kid wants done. Otherwise this will be a very pointless digression.

Lev is now in charge, by the way. The Magical Negro can't be in charge, obviously.

CyFi asks Lev why he hasn't dumped him, left him to fend for himself, and Lev says it's because he's here to bear witness.

I mean, that's very nice and poetic and all, but neither Lev nor CyFi know why they're in Joplin. I guess Lev read ahead in the book?

Blah, blah, blah. They get to Joplin.


Chapter 30

CyFi's point of view. He's pretty wonky, but he knows the kid in his head wants something. They wander around Joplin (I think Schusterman thinks Joplin is the size of Mayberry) until they find a place CyFi recognizes, an ice cream shop the kid used to eat at. He realizes the kid's name is Tyler.

Lev notices a police car is watching them. But CyFi knows where to go now. He stumbles off toward Tyler's house. Memories come to him -- apparently Tyler's parents are abusive assholes.

When they reach the house, Cyrus's two dads (the ones that got mmarried) are waiting outside, along with more police officers; but Cyrus screams at them that he has to do this, and they (and the police) let him. He goes up to talk to Tyler's parents who are (justly) horrified.

"Give it to me!" Cyrus screams at them. They don't have any idea what he means. He figures out he wants a shovel, and then uses the shovel to dig up a briefcase filled with jewelry, that I guess Tyler stole from his parents? Or from people around town.

CyTy, as he's now calling himself, flings these jewels at the feet of Tyler's parents, saying they can have it all, they can take it all, he doesn't want it, just please don't unwind him.

Cyrus realizes Tyler doesn't know he's been Unwound.

This is a pretty good scene, I have to admit. Good for Schusterman.

Chapter 31

I was going to stop at Chapter 30, but Schusterman has us at a cliffhanger, so I went on.

This chapter is from Lev's point of view, and he's screaming at Tyler's parents. Tell him you won't do it! he screams. Say you won't unwind him! Promise!

Tyler’s parents still huddle together, comforting each other instead of comforting Cy. It makes Lev even more furious. “TELL HIM YOU WON’T UNWIND HIM!” he screams. 

Lev threatens Tyler's parents with the shovel, promising to bash their heads in if they don't tell Tyler want he wants to hear. They say it, and Cyrus collapses into the arms of his two dads. They tell him everything will be all right now, and Cyrus agrees.

Lev runs away. For some reason the police do not stop him.

Neal Schusterman's Unwind Chapters 20-21

This section contains high-grade weirdness, so just be warned.

Chapter 20

Not too weird. Sonia ships her underground railroad group off to another stop on the railroad, but first the teacher Hannah shows up to take the baby off Risa's hands. She's going to adopt it -- which here in this world just means claiming she was storked.

No checks into Hannah's background, or her husband's background, or how she plans to parents, or where she's living, or if she can afford a child. In Schusterman's world, adopting a child is like adopting a kitten, which is about what babies are worth in this world, apparently.

Also, why did Hannah wait to come get the baby at the very last minute?

You got me.

Risa thinks about the hundreds of babies that Ohio Home Number Four, which it had been her job to help feed and change -- there was no time and no staffing for any real caring.

“In a place like this you have to practice triage,” [Nurse Greta] told Risa, referring to how, in an emergency, a nurse had to choose which patients would get medical attention. “Love the ones you can,” Nurse Greta told her. “Pray for the rest.” 

I hope Schusterman is going to explain at some point why people who get storked can't just ditch the unwanted infant at a home. How are Home infants different from Storked infants?

Part Three of the book starts with an actual 'news' story from 2006, which was in fact published by the BBC, about how parents at a Ukrainian hospital claimed their healthy newborns were being taken from them by the hospital and murdered. The hospital agreed to allow the bodies of  about 30 "foetuses and full-term babies from a cemetery used by the maternity hospital" to be exhumed, and someone sent the BBC footage of bodies that had been dismembered and were missing organs, "including brains."

This news story was picked up by "Pro-Life" propaganda sites, including the always stellar LifeNews, as evidence that "liberals" were murdering their babies for their organs.

That's clearly what Schusterman wants us to believe as well -- that these fetuses and newborns were killed for their organs.

We're reminded of the faked videos put out by David Daleiden claiming Planned Parenthood was selling fetal organs for profit. I see no further mention of these Ukrainian baby-murders anywhere on any reputable site, and suspect this "story" is as much propaganda as Daleiden's was.

Schusterman, however, obviously believes it's the stone truth. So if you thought he had any intellectual credibility....


Chapter 21

We're back with Lev, and this is such a bizarre chapter.

Schusterman tackles not just gay marriage but racism. And it would be hilarious if it wasn't appalling.

Lev has been taken under the wing of a Magical Negro -- wait, I mean a Magical Umber.

Umber because this is how Schusterman solves racism in America. See "this artist" started painting "people of African ancestry in the Deep South," and the paint color he used most was Umber. So everyone started calling black people "Umbers" and presto! That solved racism.

Me: "Oh, my God."

Anyway! This new character is a kid who seems about sixteen named Cyrus Finch, though he calls himself "CyFi."

What's a Magical Negro? It's a black character (occasionally some other minority character, such as an Asian or a disabled person or an immigrant or a "sassy gay friend") who is put in the story to help the real person -- the white main character -- on their spiritual journey.

The Magical Negro speaks in folksy language, using folksy tales to teach the white character the lessons they need to learn. Magical Negros usually come from poverty or some other "inferior" background, which of course is more "real" than the privileged background of our white character. (See, their experience has been "real," whereas the white character is "spoiled" or "soft," coming as they do from a not-real world.)

Magical Negros often have "funny" names, to emphasize the nature of their Otherness. They're so wacky, those people.

Magical Negros exist only to help white people. They have no agency or desires of their own. They're servants -- in fact, the first Magical Negros were often slaves. CF Uncle Remus, or Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

Eva with her Magical Negro Uncle Tom 

CyFi speaks in a faux-black dialect.

Schusterman lampshades this by having CyFi admit he doesn't speak AAVE naturally.

[Lev says]"You’re speaking wrong on purpose.” 

“Wrong? What makes it wrong? ... I ain’t appreciating you disrespecting my patois. 

But he's careful to make it clear that one sort of English dialect (American Broadcast Standard) is "right" while other kinds (such as AAVE) are "wrong."

“Sure, I can talk like you," [CyFi says], "but I choose not to. It’s like art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he can paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on one side of a face, and noses stickin’ outta kneecaps and stuff. See, if you paint wrong because that’s the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you’re an artist.”

See, AAVE is just "wrong" English. Not a dialect with its own grammar, wordstock, and rules for pronunciation. Nah. Just "bad" English.

This is how people who think they know something about how language works describe non-standard dialects -- just in case you thought Schusterman knew anymore about linguistics than he did about evaluating sources. (See also Dunning-Kruger Syndrome.)

Back to the plot!

CyFi is teaching Lev how to live off the land, more or less, which means charming people into giving them food (Magical Negros are always wily and charming) and breaking into abandoned houses and other buildings to find shelter for the night.

As is always the case with the Magical Negro trope, the student becomes the master -- Lev is soon better at finding food and shelter for them than Cyfi was, even though he's two or three years younger and ignorant as dirt. Because white genes are superior, obviously.

Magical Negros also often have supernatural powers, and CyFi has something like that -- he had a bad bike wreck and since kids in the Unwind world don't wear helmets, he damaged his brain.

But his two dads bought him a new temporal lobe from an Unwind to replace the damaged part.

(Wait, two dads? Yeah, gimme a minute.)

This new temporal lobe takes control of CyFi's will and body, making him do things, like shoplift, and walk to Joplin, Missouri. That's what Lev and CyFi are doing in this chapter -- walking to Joplin, because the kid who used to own the temporal lobe wants CyFi to go there.

Lev knows all about brain tissue grafts, by the way:

Lev knows about that. His sister Cara has epilepsy, so they replaced a small part of her brain with a hundred tiny brain bits. It took care of the problem, and she didn’t seem any worse for it. It had never occurred to Lev where those tiny pieces of brain tissue might have come from. 

(A) I am pretty sure that's not a viable therapy, anymore than getting someone's temporal lobe transplanted in would be a viable therapy for a traumatic brain injury; and

(2) Schusterman knows no more about how brains work than he does about linguistics or how to evaluate sources. In this section, he also makes it clear that schools do "brain scans" to determine what a person's IQ is, which, yeah, no. That's just goofy.

And speaking of goofy! Marriage Equality also doesn't exist in Schusterman's world, so while CyFi has two dads, they aren't married. But after CyFi was storked on their doorstep, they got "mmarried."

What's "mmarried"?

Apparently it's when two gay people marry. The extra M stands for Men, see, because Lesbians and bisexuals and transpeople don't exist in this world either.

Schusterman is careful to let us know, however, that both CyFi and Lev are one hundred percent heterosexual males. No icky gay people in this book.

CyFi has an episode, and self-harms, and Lev promises to take care of him. Isn't that sweet, the white kid won't let anything happen to his Magical Negro sidekick.

Sweet Jesus.

Schusterman's Unwind Ch 17 -19

Something I didn't mention in reviewing the last few chapters -- when Lev pulled the fire alarm, everyone thought it was a bomb scare. Apparently, in this world without contraception or birth control, people called "clappers" blow up schools for fun. (They do this by making their blood explosive, so that when they clap, they become tiny nuclear weapons, I guess. How do you make blood explosive? What an excellent question.)

I assume this impulse to blow up schools full of kids is because Unwinding is supposed to cause people to devalue life. That's a claim that's often made about contraception and birth control -- I've heard Evangelicals claim, for instance, that abortion leads to school shootings, because hey, if it's okay to kill a zygote, why isn't it okay to kill a 14 year old?

What really devalued life was women not being able to control their fertility. That's when we had slavery. That's when we had baby farms. That's when we had people leaving their excess children to die in jars, or dumping them en mass at foundling homes (where 90% of them died). That's when we had capital punishment for crimes as minor as theft or loitering.

I guess we could read Schusterman's book as saying that -- women unable to control their fertility leads to too many babies leads to contempt for all life.

I'm dubious, though.

Chapter 17

We're back in Risa point of view. The teacher is still helping them escape the school. She takes the baby, because obviously the police are looking for two kids with a baby. (What? Since when? Oh, since Lev betrayed them -- but how the fuck does the teacher know this? She doesn't even KNOW about Lev.)

Then Risa and Connor almost escape the two police officers who are scanning the crowd, looking for two kids with a baby -- since now Hannah has the baby (all of a sudden the teacher has a name, and it's Hannah, which we never actually learned, but okay).

They almost get away, but then Lev yells their names. In front of the police. Because he wants them to wait for him.

(1) Apparently Lev is an idiot, which I guess we knew, since he believed the whole it's-holy-to-be-tithed thing
(2) I thought the police didn't know Connor and Risa had run away? Wasn't that the whole point of the previous several chapters? Can we get a ruling on this plot point please?

Anyway, the police zero in on Risa and Connor, but not to worry, the jig is not up. Risa and Connor begin clapping wildly, because apparently that's what people who are blowing up schools full of children do, and everyone begins to run in circles, screaming and waving their arms.

Hannah catches up with them, dumps the baby on Risa again, and sends them to this antique shop, apparently a stop on the Unwind Underground Railroad.


Chapter 18

Lev's point of view. He's sad because Risa and Connor don't like him. Also, if he's not a Holy Tithe to God, then who is he?

Poor Lev is having an existential crisis. But he doesn't recognize that. He should have read fewer bible verses and more actual books.


Chapter 19

This is a long chapter. Brace yourselves.

Risa and Connor find the antique shop, but not before Connor gets annoyed at the constant crying of the baby. We get this charming sentence:

The baby is inconsolable, and Connor wants to complain to Risa about it, but knows that he can’t.

And that's how it will be from this point on, by the way. The baby is Risa's responsibility. She has to feed it and take care of it and it's her fault when it cries. I mean, we can't expect Connor to do anything to take care of a baby.

The antique shop / Underground Railroad is run by a grumpy old woman named Sonia who are first pretends not to know why Connor and Risa are there, though later she admits that Hannah called to say they were coming.

Why would Sonia do this? I think Shusterman is trying to create tension, at the expense of credibility.

Sonia advises Risa to let Connor get her pregnant "again." Apparently pregnant children aren't Unwound, so that would buy her 9 months. But apparently children can be Unwound once they give birth. Which makes very little sense. What happens to their children? State Homes? What?

Anyway, Sonia sends them to the room she lives in, behind the store, where Risa feeds the baby cow's milk straight from the fridge with a spoon.

This tells you how much time Schusterman has spent with day-old infants.

Then Sonia stows Risa and Connor and the baby down in the cellar with three other Unwind AWOLS. One is a juvenile offender, one is a rich boy with braces on his teeth, and one is an Asian girl.

We hear all their stories.

Hayden, the rich kid, has parents who are going through a messy divorce. Neither will surrender custody of him. Both agree to have him Unwound instead.

I don't need to say that makes no sense at all, right? As much sense as paying for braces for a kid you're planning to Unwind.

The juvenile offender, Roland, beat up his stepfather for hitting his mom. Mom sided with the stepfather, so Roland was sentenced to be Unwound. Apparently Unwinding is also a judicial punishment. But why only use it for 13-18 year olds? If you're going to harvest criminals for their organs, what sense does it make to stop when they turn 18?

The Asian girl, Mai, is a racist cliche. Her parents wanted a son, and kept having babies -- and unwinding the girls -- until they got one. Mai says this is "normal," and that in China "back in the day" girl babies were killed right and left.

Two chapters ago we were told Unwinding was different from killing. But now it's not again. Which is it, Schusterman?

Anyway, they squabble like adolescents down in this cellar. Risa takes care of the baby, who somehow acquired the name Didi. Connor and Hayden bond.  Hayden tells us the story of Humphrey Dunfree, who were heard about some chapters back.

See, Humphrey's parents sent him to be Unwound. But later they were sorry. So his dad hacked into the Unwind Database and found out who had gotten all of Humphrey's organs and skin and all his bits. Then the parents murdered all those kids and stitched Humphrey back together again.

I'll give it to Schusterman, this is a pretty good urban legend. It fits the worldbuilding he'd done pretty well.

Sonia takes everyone upstairs one at a time and has them write a letter to whoever they loved most in the world. (This is Connor's parents, which is a little surprising.) She says if they survive to 18, they should come back for the letter. If not, she'll mail it to their loved ones.

Again, nice touch.

The chapter ends with Connor holding the baby -- the one he's left Risa to care for non-stop since they acquired the kid -- so that Schusterman can give us a touching paragraph:

It’s asleep, and right now, in this place and at this moment, there’s something so comforting about holding it in his arms, he’s thankful he saved it. And he thinks that if his soul had a form, this is what it would be. A baby sleeping in his arms. 

Connor 'saved' it. But caring for it 24/7 is Risa's job. I don't know if Schusterman thinks this makes sense, or if we're supposed to see Connor as kind of a dick.

Maybe both.

According to my Kindle, we're only 30% through the book. I hope something interesting happens soon.

Schusterman's Unwind: Chapter 11-16

Y'all, they're apparently making a movie out of this book. What the hell.

It looks really terrible. But I do note in this movie, it's not parents selling their kids to be Unwound. It's the "government" coming to confiscate the kids.

I wonder if the part about no abortion/contraception will be in the movie.


Chapter 11

Connor finds a newspaper in some bushes. It was "misthrown" by a paperboy.

In the future, we have paperboys and newspapers printed on actual paper. Good to know.

The three felons read the newspaper eagerly, looking for a story about their escape. Nothing.

“That can’t be right,” says Lev, “I was kidnapped, or . . . uh . . . at least they think I was. That should be in the news.” 

“Lev’s right,” says Risa. “They always have incidents with Unwinds in the news. If we’re not in there, there’s a reason.” 

Connor, who we have already noticed is terrible at thinking ahead, claims it's good news. No pictures in the paper, no way to find them.

Risa claims the lack of story means Lev's family (who are rich, apparently, although I don't see how, what with 10 kids, unless they've been scamming their church, never mind, okay, I get it now) want him back, and are covering up the story to keep his felonious behavior out of the news. Also to shoot Connor and Risa, because...I don't know, just because. Why not just knock them out with the stun gun and then proceed with the unwinding?

Also in this section, both Connor and Risa seem to think that being "murdered" is worse than being Unwound. It's not what they thought before, but okay.

While everyone is arguing, a police car cruises past, as does a school bus, and also Connor hears a baby crying. It's teh Storked kid!

Connor thinks uneasily about the two Storked babies who showed up on his doorstep. Apparently some Dark Secret here, since Connor has only one younger sibling.

In any case, he approaches the Storked infant (which is still crying) and Risa tries to get him to leave. She demands to know if he's crazy.

Then the door to the house open, and the six-year-old who opens it wails, "Oh no! Mom! We've been Storked again!"

 Most people have two emergency modes. Fight and Flight. But Connor always knew he had three: Fight, Flight, and Screw Up Royally. 

It was a dangerous mental short circuit. The same short circuit that made him race back toward armed Juvey-cops to rescue Lev instead of just saving himself. He could feel it kicking in again right now. He could feel his brain starting to fry. “We’ve been storked again,” the fat kid had said. Why did he have to say “again”? Connor might have been all right if he hadn’t said “again.” 

Don’t do it! Connor tells himself. This is not the same baby! But to some deep, unreasoning part of his brain, they’re all the same baby. 

Connor's just a hero, y'all. Trying to save all the babies. (Fat shaming? What fat-shaming?)

The kid's mom shows up, and she's angry and disgusted. As you would be, if you were forced to have kids you didn't want, couldn't afford, and had no time for.

Mom accuses Connor of having left the baby on her doorstep, and threatens to call the police (the cruiser is still there, stopped by the school bus, which is taking forever to load, I guess because we have so many kids in this Future) over to deal with him. At that point, Risa steps up and claims she left the baby there.

Bear in mind Risa is 13. Apparently that's a common thing in this world without contraception or abortion -- 13 year old children having babies.

Mom says to come get the kid, then. (Storking is only legal if you don't get caught.) She also advises Risa that men are no good, and you should never trust them.



Chapter 12

They take the baby and get on the school bus, so that the police officer won't notice them.

The bus is packed full, and other students are carrying babies too. So yeah, apparently in this future children get pregnant and have babies all the time. It's NBD.

(I mean, this is accurate. Here in Arkansas, where our schools don't teach sex ed; where our Evangelical parents tell their kids that abstaining is the only legitimate form of birth control; where access to condoms, never mind other forms of birth control, is limited at best -- well, we have the highest rate of pregnancy among of 12-17 year olds in the nation: 39.5 per a thousand. In Colorado, where sex education and contraception are readily available, it's 7.9 per thousand.)

Luckily, as one of these children tells Risa, the school has a "great daycare."


Chapter 13

Back in Lev's point of view. He's on the bus, trying to understand why he didn't run to the police when he had the chance. He thinks Risa is probably right, and that the police have orders to shoot Risa and Connor, with actual bullets.

Again, this makes no sense. I suppose Lev's Evil Family (he tells us they're influential, and not to be "trifled with") could want to keep Lev's escape, as they see it, quiet. But it's not like Unwound kids at the Harvest Factory have access to the media. I mean, I wouldn't expect they do.

Lev doesn't want Risa and Connor shot. But he does think they should be Unwound:

These two Unwinds are out of control. He no longer fears that they’ll kill him, but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. They need to be protected from themselves. They need . . . they need . . . they need to be unwound. Yes. That’s the best solution for these two. They’re of no use to anyone in their current state, least of all themselves. It would probably be a relief for them, for now they’re all broken up on the inside. Better to be broken up on the outside instead. 

"Broken on the inside" reminds me of the way Arkansas Evangelicals talk about progressives. We're "dirty on the inside," as one of my kid's classmates told her.

It's a way of dehumanizing people, and thus very accurate here.

Anyway, he decides to enlist the help of the boy sitting next to him, telling him he's being held hostage by the AWOL kids sitting behind them.

The boy could not care less, which is kind of funny.


Chapter 14

The bus arrives at school. Connor, Lev, and Risa (still toting the baby) go to hide in the girl's bathroom until lunch time. Schusterman seems to think this would work, that no one would notice three kids and a baby going into a girl's bathroom and hiding out all morning. Connor says he used to hide in bathrooms all the time, to get out of going to class.

Did Schusterman go to high school? That's really not how it works. I mean, these kids aren't students, so no one will be looking for them. But Connor was a student at his school. The minute he didn't show up for class, his teacher would be issuing a report to the office, where someone would call his parents to ask where he was. Even when I was in school, back in the dark ages, that was how it worked. And I know it's how it works now, since I got more than one of those phone calls (always clerical errors, since my kid is an inveterate rule-follower).

Anyway, they hide in the bathroom. And we hear Connor's story about the storked baby that showed up on his doorstep.

His parents didn't want a baby, so they storked it to another house in the neighborhood. Who also storked it. Who also storked it. Eventually it showed up at Connor's house again, but by then it was dying of neglect.

That's Connor's trauma.

Except this story doesn't make sense in the world as it has been given to us -- apparently if you get a Storked Baby, and you don't want it, you're allowed to send it to one of the State Homes. That's what happened with Risa, remember.

Lev tells us that storking is perfectly moral, and no big deal. Doesn't his family have three storked kids? Also storking is in the Bible. Wasn't Moses storked? Checkmate, pagans.

Classes change. A flood of students. When the bathroom is empty again -- Connor and Risa notice Lev has run away.

How? He's a boy in the girl's bathroom. No one noticed as he left with them? No one said a thing? I mean, okay, maybe in the Future adolescents are more accepting of trans kids, but (a) Lev isn't trans and (b) this world doesn't seem like that world. So far we haven't even seen any LGB kids, much less trans kids.

Also, the baby starts crying.


Chapter 15

Ah. Now we get an explanation. As Lev was leaving the bathroom, the girls did notice him. But they just made fun of him.

Lev finds his way to the office and turns himself in, telling them he's been kidnapped by AWOL Unwinds.

Everyone is horrified and very sympathetic. The police are called. Lev is puzzled by their assumption that he's going home -- I guess he didn't notice that he didn't tell them he was an Unwind as well. To be fair, Lev doesn't consider himself an Unwind. He's a Tithe, which is...somehow better?

He calls home, and his pastor answers the phone, and is horrified to find Lev is trying to be unwound. He tells Lev that he convinced Lev's parents not to call the police, that Lev's escape was "God's Will."

And he tells Lev he should run for it. Lev is stunned.

And all at once the truth comes to Lev. Pastor Dan wasn’t telling him to run away from the kidnapper that day—he was telling Lev to run away from him. From his parents. From his tithing. After all of his sermons and lectures, after all that talk year after year about Lev’s holy duty, it’s all been a sham. Lev was born to be tithed—and the man who convinced him this was a glorious and honorable fate doesn’t believe it. 

So apparently in Schusterman's world the religious leaders know murdering kids for their organs is wrong, but...for some reason they don't stand up and say so?

Lev slips out of the office and pulls the fire alarm.

Why? I guess so he can escape in the hoo-rah, but that's not really clear.


Chapter 16

Now we're in the point of view of a teacher. She's mad that there's a fire alarm during her planning period, and also she thinks it's a fake alarm, like always. She thinks about staying in her room.

(Hey, Schusterman: Teachers are told when there's going to be a fire alarm test, and for just this reason -- you don't want them deciding to stay in their rooms during a real emergency.)

But she decides to evacuate with all the students, because she wants to be a good example.

As she's herding students from the building she hears -- a baby crying!

Following the sound, she finds Connor and Risa hiding in a chemistry lab with the storked baby. She realizes they're Unwinds (why? how? This is two kids with a baby, why does she think they're Unwinds?) and decides to help them escape.

Why?

I think we're supposed to understand that no one in this world thinks the Unwind program is a good idea. (Except maybe Connor's parents.) And yet they do nothing useful about it. I hope we find out why later.

Reading Unwind Chapters 5-10

This sections gets a little more into world-building. Not convincing world-building, mind you.

Chapter Five

An entirely unnecessary point of view switch, though I guess it does give us some world-building.

You'll remember we left off with our three main characters, Connor, Risa, and Lev, fleeing from the scene of the accident.

This chapter (with the title "Cop") is from the point of view of a single police officer who chases them into the woods. We get a look at his thoughts about Unwind kids who try to run away:

He knows AWOL Unwinds will not give up as long as there’s an ounce of consciousness left in them. They are high on adrenaline, and often high on illegal substances as well. Nicotine, caffeine, or worse. He wishes his bullets were the real thing. He wishes he could truly take these wastes-of-life out rather than just taking them down. Maybe then they wouldn’t be so quick to run—and if they did, well, no great loss. 

This is going to be part of Schusterman's Big Theme, which is that this new world was created to make life more sacred, but has actually cheapened life.

And I mean, that makes sense. A world where parents were allowed to sell off their 13 year olds to the organ factory would be a fucked up world.

But I can't help seeing a covert "pro-life" message here, given that this is one of the arguments made often by anti-choice people. Their claim is that pro-choice people see life as disposable, and that abortion and birth control have created a generation that sees life as cheap and degraded. I've seen arguments that the pro-choice worldview has led to school shootings, for example.

(This is deeply ironic, obviously, given that it's "Pro-life" people who are adamantly opposed to such things as food stamps, socialized medicine, universal daycare, and every other social good which might help people and their children survive. Pro-fetus /= Pro-life.)

Anyway, the eeeevil cop is ambushed by Connor, who steals his tranquilizer gun and knocks him out.

So not a very good cop, apparently.


Chapter Six

Back to Lev's point of view. Connor has tied him to a tree with some handy vines (what?) and is refusing to release him, since he knows Lev will run right back and surrender himself to be Unwound if he does.

This part seems odd. I guess Schusterman wants to start build up Connor as our hero, someone who -- unlike his culture -- sees all life as sacred. Thus even though he doesn't know Lev, and even though Lev clearly wants to be Unwound, and even though that's a religious choice on Lev's point, Connor Knows Best, and will imprison him to keep him alive.

But in fact this doesn't mesh with the Connor as we've met him. That Connor didn't have enough foresight to stay out of trouble when he knew his life was at risk, didn't care about his parents or his sibling, didn't care about getting the girl he supposedly loved in big trouble (putting her at risk of being Unwound), and wasn't clever enough to leave his phone behind. But now he understands (intuitively, I guess?) that All Life Is Sacred.

If Connor was keeping Lev a prisoner because he knew Lev would betray them all, this would make much more sense. But nope.

Lev decides to play along and pretend to be grateful for their help. Then he'll run as soon as he has the chance.


Chapter Seven

This chapter starts out with the Connor we've come to know:

Connor should have kept the Juvey-cop’s gun, but he wasn’t thinking. He was so freaked out at having tranq’d a cop with his own weapon, he just dropped it and ran—just as he dropped his backpack on the interstate so he could carry Lev. His wallet with all his money was in that pack. Now he has nothing but pocket lint. 

We also find out that Lev bit Connor at some point, and that the bite on his arm is becoming infected.

Also, that Connor thinks Risa is pretty. You will never guess why:

Risa’s pretty. Not in the way Ariana was pretty—in a better way. Ariana’s prettiness was all about makeup and pigment injections and stuff. Risa has a natural kind of beauty. 

Ah, yes. The 'natural' kind of pretty that guys 'really' like.

I hope you can hear my eyes rolling from way over here.

Also in this chapter we hear about some mythic Unwind, Humphrey Dunfree, who kids "everywhere" tell stories about. We don't get the stories here. Shusterman makes us wait.


Chapter Eight

Nothing happens, except we learn people in this world litter a lot. Also, Connor and Risa flirt with each other, more or less. It's not very interesting flirting.


Chapter Nine

Now we're in the point of view of a 'mother' (that's her entire identity, Schusterman doesn't even give her a name, mother is all she is) who has just given birth to a child. Apparently on her own, I guess in this alley.

I mean, I know that happens, especially with adolescents (this one is 19) who don't want to be pregnant. But despite what (some) people claim, giving birth to a child isn't 'natural' and it isn't easy. It's a dangerous business, and a 19 year old giving birth to a child on their own would be a horror show, not no-big-deal.

The 19 year old passes a dumpster on the way out of the alley and thinks about how in the past she would have been tempted to toss her baby in that.

There was a time, shortly after the Bill of Life was passed, that Dumpsters such as that would be tempting to girls like her. Desperate girls who would leave unwanted newborns in the trash. It had become so common that it wasn’t even deemed newsworthy anymore—it had become just a part of life. Funny, but the Bill of Life was supposed to protect the sanctity of life. Instead it just made life cheap.

Luckily, there's a new law called "The Storking Initiative." Basically, people can abandon their infants on any doorstep they please, and the people who live in the house legally have to adopt the infant.

This sheds new light on Lev's parents. You'll remember they had several kids who were 'storked.' I thought this meant they adopted kids of their own free will. But not so. Adoption is as forced as pregnancy and childbirth are in this world.

The 'mother' leaves her infant on a doorstep and staggers off.

If they catch her, she’s obliged to keep the baby—that’s part of the Storking Initiative too—but if they open the door and find nothing but the child, it’s “finder’s keepers” in the eyes of the law. Whether they want it or not, the baby is legally theirs. 

This is so obviously a recipe for disaster that I can't believe Schusterman thought for a second this part of the worldbuilding would be convincing. Force people not related to a child to adopt a child against their will -- one they can't afford and don't want. What do you think happens next?

I mean, we know what happened historically in this situation. There was an entire industry of 'baby farms' where parents sent their own children that they didn't want and couldn't afford, knowing that 9 out of 10 infants died on these farms. Not to mention what happened in Romania when Nicolae Ceausescu made both abortion and contraception illegal.

But here in the Unwind world it's going to be different somehow?

Schusterman adds a tiny sermon as the 'mother' flees the scene:

As she hurries down the street, she thinks how wonderful it is that she can get a second chance. How wonderful it is that she can dismiss her responsibility so easily. 

See, you slut, if you have sex, you have to be punished with a baby. Using contraception, or abortion, to prevent or end an unwanted pregnancy? That's just irresponsible. If we don't punish women with children for the crime of having sex, why, who knows what will happen to Our Society?


Chapter 10

We find out Risa is good at conning people out of food and clothing, which is better than Connor's plan -- he was just going to steal shit.

They need new clothing so they can disguise themselves, since they're now fugitives. And felons, as Lev points out:

“We’re not perps,” says Connor, “we’re AWOLs.” 
“We’re felons,” says Lev. “Because what you’re doing— I mean, what we’re doing—is a federal crime.” 
“What, stealing clothes?” asks Connor. 
“No, stealing ourselves. Once the unwind orders were signed, we all became government property.

It's another eeevil government plot.

Which is another problem I have with books like this -- governments are always eeeevil. And that's what most adolescents grow up thinking, because of these books and because of the GOP: government = evil.

Lack of government is the real evil. Governments sometimes fuck up, and sometimes they are run by evil men (cf Nicolae Ceausescu), but government itself is a necessity, and the only way we can stave off disaster, prevent the tragedy of the commons, and keep robber-barons from devouring us all.

Though, obviously, when the robber-barons buy the government, as is happening these days, you've got a different sort of problem.

But eeeevil government is such a tired trope. Please can we have better villains please.



More later