Finished reading: Brave New World 📚
It took me forever, but I'm finally done reading my first fiction of the year! Last weekend I finished Brave New World, a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley, and I needed some time to digest the turn the story took in the last 25% of the book.
I can see the similarities with We, although Brave New World is way more relatable. It feels less science-fiction and more the-world-we-live-in-today.
Basically, the story happens in a Civilized future where society is based on castes, and each caste is made of happy, cloned people. At some point, we encounter a Savage reservation and there's quite the culture shock between those two ways of living. Still, the pace of the book remains steady. Until 75% we are still world-building and character-building. And then we reach the 75% and suddenly one of the characters goes quite mad, and everything felt very wtf. The ending left me disappointed. I hated the book a little.
It took me out of my comfort zone and I needed time to digest. But I have been thinking about it those past days, slowly making sense of things, and now I can say it was actually a GREAT BOOK. Really smart. It invited me to think about so many things in our world. About how we are the "savages" in the story -- with our families, religions, wars, and eternal search for the greener grass --, but constantly searching for that "civilized" state -- a hyper-sexualized, intoxicated, hedonistic society.
I'm happy I read this one. Next up: 1984.
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