MASTER CLASS

A woman takes on the educational system in order to save her daughter in this dystopian thriller.

Elena Fairchild has two daughters—Anne, 16, who does extremely well in school, and Freddie, 9, who has intense anxiety and struggles to keep up her grades—and is married to Malcolm Fairchild, the man who helped implement a new government educational system in which each person is assigned a Q, a number based largely on intelligence that determines their place in society. Elena, a teacher at an elite school, conducts each month’s Q tests with dread, watching more and more children fall through the cracks. When Freddie bombs her tests and her Q drops below 8, Elena knows the girl will be taken away to a boarding school half the country away and her family will have few opportunities to visit or even talk to her. Elena’s grandmother, who grew up in Germany during the run-up to World War II, warns her that she must rescue her daughter before it’s too late. With everything against her, Elena throws caution to the wind in an attempt to get Freddie back. Dalcher (Vox, 2018) is no stranger to tackling social issues in her fiction, and this time she turns her eye to eugenics. The book's examination of the way people will accept more and more small social changes until the system becomes something unrecognizable and horrific feels timely and urgent. There are moments when this message is delivered in an overly blunt way, but it’s an important enough idea that the book works anyway. The world is fully realized, though it isn't clear if it's set in the present day or a near future. The writing, however, is top notch and keeps the reader guessing.

An engaging parable of dangerous social change.