![]() “Did you ever have nightmares? Before you were cured, I mean.” I don’t say anything, and Julian coughs, then clears his throat. “They say it will get better after the procedure,” he says, almost like an apology, and I wonder if he is thinking the obvious: If I even make it through. There can never be any sympathy between us. “I always have.”įor a split second I feel a little hitch in my chest, like something hard there has loosened. Nightmares.” Julian speaks the words in a rush, obviously embarrassed. “But what?” Dream images are still fluttering through my head, skirting the edges of consciousness. ![]() His voice sounds softer now, less precise-as though the darkness has somehow melted its edges. He is a large black shape against the darkness. I feel hot and sick, and push the woolen blanket all the way to the foot of the cot, enjoying the cool air on my skin. The electric light has been switched off, leaving us in perfect darkness. I open my eyes into blackness, suppressing a cry. Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…Īt a certain point, I drift off to sleep. He restores my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. For revenge I mouth words, silently, into the concrete-old, forbidden words Raven taught me, from one of the old religions. “I hope so,” I say fervently, and then I go to my cot, curling up toward the wall so he’ll know I’m done talking to him. I’m suddenly disgusted with him, and his calm certainty about the world, as though all of life can be dissected and neatly labeled, just like a specimen in a laboratory.īut I don’t say any of this. I wonder how many times he has had the same words, the same ideas, drilled into his head. They’ll understand why it’s so necessary.” Julian is using his public voice, as though he’s addressing a large crowd. Maybe now people will understand what the DFA is trying to do. “You saw them at the demonstration, didn’t you?” When I don’t answer, he goes on, “I don’t know. Even here, Lena Morgan Jones must act the way she is supposed to. “You don’t know they’re responsible for this,” I say quickly, and then regret it. “He won’t like dealing with the Invalids, though,” he adds. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust. In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. ![]() “My father will pay,” he says after a beat. Julian fingers the cut on his lip, considering this. “Ransom, probably.” It’s the only thing that makes sense. “Why do you think they’re keeping us here?” he asks. This is the first sign of agitation I’ve seen from him. He stands up, walks to the door, and returns. I feel a lot of adult fiction looks down on plot as a lesser form of literature.Julian seems to feel he has said too much. "These novels were strange, ambitious and entertaining. It was on this supposedly grown-up stage that she began reading stories for young adults. Oliver sublimated her ambition to be a novelist by working for Penguin in New York. "They were roundly rejected by every publisher because they had no plot. It was ridiculous." These fledgling efforts earned Oliver an agent but little else. ![]() "My first novel was about a 35-year-old whose wife dies of cancer and who takes up with a prostitute. "I was failing to write these long, depressing books," says the 29-year-old. Arguably the hottest property in Young Adult fiction right now, Oliver spent her own teenage years reading Henry James and nursing a precocious ambition to compose the great American novel. It is tempting to view Lauren Oliver's literary career as working in reverse. ![]()
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