Little Brother: Cory Doctorow

Book: Little Brother
Author: Cory Doctorow
Pages: 384
Age Range: 13 and up

Background: Cory Doctorow's Little Brother has been extensively reviewed in both the blogs and the mainstream press. The review that first made me interested enough to read the book was at Swarm of Beasts. I was actually intrigued enough by this book to a) purchase it (despite the many review books on my shelf); and b) take the hardcover with me on a trip. I'm not going to review it in detail, because I feel like everyone already knows about this book, but I did want to say a few things.

Book Discussion: Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow, is set in a very near-term dystopia, one in which technological advances, combined with fears of terrorism, have combined to almost completely remove personal privacy. Teenager Marcus is a hacker, and a bit of a rebel. Together with three of his friends, he sneaks out of school for a couple of hours to track down a clue for an alternative reality game. While the four are out on the streets of San Francisco, a terrorist bombing occurs nearby. The teens are swept up by Homeland Security and taken to be questioned, and humiliated, at an undisclosed location. Three of the four, including Marcus, are released, but they are scarred, in hidden ways, by the experience. Marcus becomes a man on a mission - a mission to take on Homeland Security and gain justice for his lost friend. He becomes Little Brother, the antithesis of Big Brother, and he starts a movement among teens.

As Sheila Ruth pointed out at Wands and Worlds, this book "in a literary sense, it isn't very well written". There are lengthy passages with details about encryption, for example, which are likely to leave the average reader cold. I'm pretty tech-savvy, and some of it was still over my head. There's a tendency towards getting the adults involved when it's time to really solve problems. And (as Sheila again pointed out) the message is quite overt - something that I normally don't like in fiction. Doctorow clearly knows a lot about technology and electronic surveillance, and he has some serious concerns. He seems to have written this book not so much because he had a story that he wanted to tell, but because he had a message that he wanted to get across (about taking back our personal freedoms, and not letting fear drive us to give up privacy).

And yet ... for the most part, this book works. It is utterly terrifying. It made me seriously consider using some sort of software to make my browsing habits more anonymous. It made me wonder about all of the information that Google collects about its users every day. (And what I mostly do on the web is read about children's books - it's not like I have anything to hide.) It made me think. Little Brother is the kind of book that you want to give to other people, so that it can make them think, too. I read it in two sittings, because I had to know what happened to Marcus and his friends.

I still don't really think of Little Brother as conventional fiction - it's more like speculative non-fiction (what might happen if...), cloaked in a story. But I'm willing to give it a pass relative to my "message book" ban, because I think that this particular message, aimed at the particular young adult audience that it is, works in this format. My problem with most message books is that I think they turn kids off of reading. They insult kids by trying to tell them what to do, while pretending to tell them a story, and teach kids that fiction isn't fun. I think that Little Brother, though, is so technology and fact-based (as compared to just "you should do this because I think it's a good thing"-based) that kids won't feel tricked by it. They'll accept it for what it is - a way to talk about something that might happen, in an engaging enough fashion to get people to pay attention (it reminds me of Atlas Shrugged that way, actually, though Little Brother is a more immediately compelling story). And Marcus is an appealing narrator - he sounds like a teenager. He does make the book fun to read.

In summary, I recommend Little Brother for teens and adults. It's thought-provoking and suspenseful, and will make you think about the direction we're going in as a country. The San Francisco setting is detailed and authentic ("you can always spot the tourists, they're the ones who think CALIFORNIA = WARM and spend their San Francisco holidays freezing in shorts and T-shirts" and "only cops could double-park in the middle of Van Ness Street without getting towed by the schools of predatory tow operators that circled endlessly, ready to enforce San Francisco's incomprehensible parking regulations and collect a bounty for kidnapping your car). Even though this book was frightening, I'm glad that I read it.

Publisher: Tor Teen
Publication Date: April 2008
Source of Book: Bought it
Other Blog Reviews: Too many to list.
Author Interviews: Speculative Fiction

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Brian F.]

I also had mixed feelings about LITTLE BROTHER, for most of the same reasons you cite. I agree with Sheila Ruth's assessment and, in addition to your misgivings, I'm also not sure Doctorow manages to convince me that what Marcus and his friends set out to do--disrupt the DHS--is any different from what terrorists do (not all terrorists kill). Sure, he trots out the Declaration of Independence and says that we should overthrow unjust governments...but Marcus and his friends seem more bound to the hacker mentality of disruption for the sake of disruption rather than making a political statement.

What I think Doctorow does well, which makes this perfect teen material, is feed on the insecurities we all have about privacy. We're all intensely private, and I think that holds more so for teens who are going through those awkward, developmental stages and are less sure of themselves. I think he really taps into those base levels of fear regarding loss of privacy and then goes for the jugular with scenes of torture.

[Sarah]

You put into words so eloquently what I could not. :) There were times I skimmed ahead because the techno jargon was BEATING ME OVER THE HEAD. Yet, I was compelled to finish the book as quickly as possible.

Oh, and the editing issues drove me nutso. They pulled me out of the story more than anything else.

But all in all, I really enjoyed the book. So Doctorow accomplished his mission. :)

[Jen Robinson]

Excellent points, Brian. Even I, though certainly not a teenager, was quite bothered by the loss of privacy issues. I can imagine that for teens that whole thing is very scary. It would be teens who would come up with some sort of hidden internet where they couldn't be tracked, if anyone did.

And Sarah, your comments show what an unusual book this is. That you can complain about the jargon, complain about the editing, but still read and talk about the book. Fascinating!

[Charlotte]

Gee, Jen--ever since you wrote about possibly scaling back, your blog has been more interesting than ever!

[Jen Robinson]

Thanks for noticing, Charlotte. I must admit that a bunch of the reviews that I've been posting were written before my big scaling back post. Which is one indicator of the pressure that I was feeling - I scrambled to produce these reviews ahead of time, knowing that I had some travel and things coming up. Things like that made me feel like I was on a treadmill. But now, I'm reaping the rewards by having things to post (though there are only a couple left from that binge still to come). But the encouragement from the Kidlitosphere has made me happier to do new reviews, too. Funny how that works out.

I am going to take some time off from the roundup posts for the next couple of weeks, though. I think. If I have the willpower to do it.

[Charley]

I enjoyed this book for the most part. I picked it up because I had just read 1984. I agree, the computer jargon put me to sleep, but overall I thought it was pretty fun.

[Jen Robinson]

This book made me want to re-read 1984, actually, Charley. I haven't done it yet, but I am curious to do so - I last read it back in college. But I do agree with you - overall, Little Brother is a fun read.

[lenore]

This is the only book I read last month that I didn't review, and I can't review because I agree so completely with everything you said, I would probably plagerize without meaning to.

[Jen Robinson]

Too funny, Lenore. I didn't even quite consider this a review, more a reaction to the book. I'm glad I'm not alone in what I felt about it.