The Product
by Marina Fontaine
Conservatarian Press, 2022
[ #23 After the fall: A post-apocalyptic or dystopic book. ]
This book kept popping up in my Kindle feed, so I chose it for the “Dystopia” category of this year’s challenge.
It occurred to me when writing this review that “Russian Dystopia” is perhaps a subset, one I have sampled before when I read Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic for the 2022 challenge. The country in this short novel is never named, yet it’s clear it is a stand-in for the Soviet Union during its drabbest time… post-WWII when everything had been modernized but was utilitarian and gray for the common folk and under constant threat of surveillance. As such, I consider it an alt.universe science fiction fable, an allegory. As a dystopia it was softer than the English and American varieties, with more humanity. It was a short work, novella-sized, but had all the impact to me of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
(The author was born in Russia before the fall of the Berlin Wall, so she has firsthand experience.)
The story is about Kevin, a young dealer of “The Product” (you find out what that is later, and it’s essential for citizens not to give up hope and keep their sense of empathy) who is captured by the secret police and horribly abused. This takes up, I’d say, the first half of the book. It’s a lot like fanfic in its length and detail, and I couldn’t help feeling some of it was gratuitous; yet, it served the story with upping the stakes for the characters later in the book. Miraculously, he escapes with aid from his fellow dealers, who form a secret underground society of sorts. He returns to his girlfriend, Lily, and struggles to set up a new identity and a new life. There’s a surprise twist at the end. I won’t reveal it here. But the story didn’t end horribly like I expected, or was conditioned to expect, from books like Orwell’s 1984.
The author has her own voice. She broke a lot of writing rules I’ve seen posted on the Authors Water Cooler boards and elsewhere, but it was mesmerizing and kept me on the edge of my seat up to the end. In that she was similar to another of my favorite authors, Storm Constantine, also a breaker of rules, but also mesmerizing.
The story alternated between Kevin’s and Lily’s POVs, which often changed mid-chapter, and at times, went off into omniscient or into a side character’s. The emotional detail was very fine and I felt I knew everyone inside and out, even if broadly (in the case of a sadistic policeman who takes delight in torturing the dealer.) At times the characters did things I didn’t expect, which was a delight, such as forgoing sex until an official wedding ceremony is performed by a pastor masquerading as an appliance installer, no less. I grew up on SF of the 1970s where it was the in thing for the characters to have sex on the drop of a dime, so that touch was sweet. (Though that’s all I’ll give away of the plot.)
In the end, recommended. Readers who devour YA dystopias should take a look at this; it’s way more mature and nuanced, and even romantic.
