The Program by Susan Young | Berg’s Book Club

Book Title: The Program
Book Author: Susan Young
Series Name: The Program
Book #no: #1
Genre: Teen & Ya, Dystopian
First Published: March 2013

It’s been a long time since I have actually liked a dystopian book without it boring me or irritating me. The last dystopian I reviewed, Matched, I gave 2 stars. Admittedly, that was when my blog was new and I had not found my own style of book reviews yet. Matched had a great deal of potential, but the rating still stands.

The Program is three stars because I thought many of the techniques used to advance the plot was clever. I mean I saw them coming, but I am a writer myself and that sometimes that does make plot devices a bit more predictable. Still, I thought the way it was done was clever.

This blook had a feeling it might become a trilogy. You know what I mean? That feeling where you are halfway through the book and the character still hasn’t started the main event of the story. Lately, I have gone off trilogies. Not that many are well written. But the first book in this series has made me hopeful for the rest.

In fact, I looked and it’s a series of SIX books. I’m not sure if six is too many, we’ll see.

Synopsis

Slone, her boyfriend James and their friend, Miller live in a world where suicide is an epidemic. This needs to be controlled, starting with minors. Slone’s school and her parents act as a Big Brother of sorts. They inform the government if they believe any child is mentally ill and may commit suicide.

Plot

One thing about dystopian books is that there is usually a lot of exposition early on. This often lets us know what is going to happen early on. Sloane watches her friend being dragged away, which tells the reader would know that eventually, she too will be dragged away and sent to The Program to cure her mental illness and as a result, lose her memories. So I would say the plot was a little too predictable.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen straight away; it takes the death of her friend, Miller, and loosing her boyfriend to the program before Solane is taken by the Handlers. A handler is someone who guards the kids in the program.

She tries to remain strong to keep herself out of the program as she waits for her boyfriend’s return. When he does return, she realises he cannot remember her or any of the happy times they spent together. It is this isolation and lose that ultimately makes it hard for her to hide her depression from her parents and she is sent to the program.

The story then focuses on Solane and her need to escape.

Plot devices

While the story is easily predictable, I feel the seed and plant devices that Young uses were intelligent decisions. An example is when Sloane realises she has no escape from being sent to the program. She hides a picture of her brother and her boyfriend under a hole in her mattress, along with a plastic ring her boyfriend gave her before she loses her memories. It is clear she will find it there but I liked it.

Solane is thinking, fighting the system rather than being passive or relying on someone helping her. She’s not immune to the pill like Tris in Divergent is to the stimulant. The drugs she is fed at the program do have an effect on her, so she is not safe just because she is the protagonist. And I like this.

The other device is a purple pill given to her by a sneezy and slimeball “Handler” in exchange for a french kiss. The pill lets the person hold onto one memory. She chooses the ring and photo under the mattress.

Again, predictable, but I found it a good device and a clever way of going about it. The character had to sacrifice herself to have a chance at keeping one memory, and while it is not right, I am glad it was only a french kiss and nothing more.

One thing I like about the plot is that the character has to fight for the information herself. It doesn’t come easy to her and this makes her an active character.

Mental Health

It was clear to me that she was going to lose her memories but also have that magical protagonist power where not ALL memories are gone.

One thing about the topic of mental illness is that the book only talks about one in particular. Depression and one of its effects, suicide. The book is written in first person, which would make it hard to show other mental illnesses, but even so, a hint of others would have been nice.

Characterisation

So you may have guessed it, but I liked the characterisation of the protagonist, Sloane. I think it may have been the strongest point of the novel. At the start of the book, Solane is a passive character; reliant on the support of her boyfriend James, and best friend Miller. Miller’s death is her catalyst to become a strong character as she supports her boyfriend through his grief.

It is only when she loses everyone that she is caught by the Program. But she still fights, even then! Doesn’t take it lying down. And I like how this makes her active

The other characters are not nearly as well developed, but they do have character. James takes every death of his classmates seriously. He tattoos each of them onto his arm, which the Program removes before he returns home.

Miller is a lovesick puppy who is heartbroken when his girlfriend comes back with no recognition of him.    

Michael Realm, one of the kids in the program, falls in love with Sloane. He is also an interesting and strong character. To win Sloane’s love, he waits for Sloane to forget who James is. This backfires when Sloane learns that he’s helping the Program

Dystopians and exposition 

One thing I have noticed is that I seem to be able to read dystopian fiction like The Program quite easily. However, it’s not because I like one more than the other, I think it’s because the style of writing is different. They have light sentence structures, are fast pace, not too descriptive and usually written in first person.

Divergent, Matched, and The Program all start in similar ways: a teenager or young adult has to witness and go through an unethical event. Usually one where they are imprisoned.

Tris from Divergent gets sorted into her fragment. There, she is trapped living the life her fragment is meant to live. assia has her life planned out for her—who she will marry, where she will work and how many children. She’s trapped in a forced marriage and life. Sloane is carted off to the Program so that she can be brainwashed into thinking the way the government wants her to think. Her mental health “cured” because all her memories are wiped.

Often, dystopian books open up with a lot of exposition; this was the case for Divergent and Matched. The Program does have exposition, but it wasn’t the world-building I had issue with. In the first half of the book, Sloane explains the relationship between herself, her brother—who commited suicide, and James. This is told to us rather than shown, but it gets repeated later on. It’s a shame that the first mention of this is so early on, as the second mention is much more powerful.

If Young had cut the first mention, Sloane could have got to the program much quicker and the story have a powerful impact. This then could have added to her resistance to talk. Her resistance to hold on to the memory.

World-Building

It’s not fantastic world building, something that seems to be common in dystopian lit.  There is nothing that makes it stand out and makes me think it’s a different world to our own but I understand how the system works and how it works. However, it’s not awful world building.

The impression I received when reading the book was that the government have only been sending these teenagers into the program for the last five-ten years. So I think it may hold up for the timescale hinted at in the book… I mean PIP has been going for that long now and it seems just as intrusive.

What I find interesting, and what makes it different to other dystopian is that while the timescale is so short, there are already people fighting the government for change, rebelling and campaigning. Usually, these types of books have a lengthy paragraph or even a full chapter that explains in exposition that the world they live in has been under dictatorship for over 50 years before the third or whatever generation begins to rebel and fight back. Just like there are people appealing and campaigning about PIP and Universal Credit at the moment.

The book also questions whether the pressures society put on the teenagers to not be ill causes them to be ill in the first place. This links to the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy in psychology, where you label someone as something and so they become that thing.

So I found this quite interesting and different from other modern dystopian’s out there and I feel this too adds to the world-building of the book. However, world building and dictatorship isn’t my speciality, what do you guys think?

Overall thoughts

I liked this book, I probably won’t read it again but I liked it. Like many trilogies in this genre, I feel it would have been better as a single book, or at a push, two. Cut away all the exposition that is not needed kind of thing. I am not really sure how she got six books out of it and I am not going to read the other books but I think this is the best dystopian I have seen that falls under the same kind of plot and storylines as the above-mentioned books for a while.

I think stealing memories is an interesting issue discussed as well because it questions whether we are the same person if we do not have our memories.
However, if you are looking for a good series of books or a trilogy to read, then The Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness is the best trilogy of books I have ever seen.