84K

Name: 84K
Author: Claire North
ISBN: 9780316316804

by Claire North

The grimy, meticulously constructed and worrisomely believable dystopia Claire North has created for 84k is our world, just a few years down the path. A near-future England gone bonkers with fiscal rationalism and austerity panic — a place where every vital service has been privatized and every life assigned a monetary value. There’s nothing particularly original about the notion of such an actuarial society, but North comes to it with eyes round in terror, bringing a kind of slinking, resentful humanity to every street corner and slum. There are no heroes in this story. No glorious moments of blood and fire. There’s just a man, his past, the daughter he’s trying to find and a slow-burning revolution that sparks across 450-some pages and leaves nearly everyone we meet broken and buried in its path.

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NPR Books We Love

"The grimy, meticulously constructed and worrisomely believable dystopia Claire North has created for 84k is our world, just a few years down the path. A near-future England gone bonkers with fiscal rationalism and austerity panic — a place where every vital service has been privatized and every life assigned a monetary value. There’s nothing particularly original about the notion of such an actuarial society, but North comes to it with eyes round in terror, bringing a kind of slinking, resentful humanity to every street corner and slum. There are no heroes in this story. No glorious moments of blood and fire. There’s just a man, his past, the daughter he’s trying to find and a slow-burning revolution that sparks across 450-some pages and leaves nearly everyone we meet broken and buried in its path."

NPR Books We Love — 2018 · apps.npr.org