My 14 year old daughter is like, all dystopian and stuff now
She read Fahrenheit 451 and loved it! We ended up discussing for nearly two hours. Now she wants MORE! More Bradbury, more dystopia, more fall of Man!
My problem is finding more. I got her The Veldt and Something Wicked this Way Comes and 1984, We and Brave New World. The issue is We and Brave New World are so dated. In style, I mean, I’m not sure if those will hold her attention, 1984 is old but it doesn’t “read” old. IMO.
So dopers any boots treading on necks reading materials to suggest?
Are you including modern choices? Because you can’t throw a rock without hitting a modern teen dystopian novel. (The most obvious being the Hunger Games trilogy.) If you want to split the age difference between 1984 and The Hunger Games, try The Girl Who Owned a City by O.T. Nelson.
Several of the recent young adult fiction series (such as The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner and the Divergent series) are dystopian stories. But I’d assume a fourteen-year-old would already be familiar with those.
She’s already done The Hunger Games and Divergent. Hunger Games she liked well enough, she didn’t bother finishing Divergent.
I was looking for something a little more towards the adult literature side (though without any overt sex or grisly killing). She reads a lot already so most YA stuff she’s already familiar with, she wants something a bit higher up the ladder if you know what I mean. Not pretentious (my feelings) but not condescending either.
Does it have to be dystopian? The Sparrow is a good one, and its sequel Children of God not as good but it answers questions left in The Sparrow. Geek Love is a good one for the story of a different kind of family. And of course all of the Madeline L’Engle Wrinkle In Time books.
I was scanning this list to try to trigger some reccomendations, but most of them either don’t quite fit IMHO or I haven’t read them. Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is probably the best choice from the list (from the books I’m familiar with.) Battle Royale would be a good choice, too, if you are willing to let it slide a bit on the “grisly killing” aspect.* Battle Royale* is basically *The Hunger Games *cranked up to 11 and written years earlier. (And both of them are less similar but not entirely unlike The Long Walk by Steven King/Richard Bachman.) I’d also suggest The World Inside by Robert Silverberg. The plot revolves around a future Earth where the culture takes “be fruitful and multiply” very, very seriously, but I don’t remember if the sex is very explicit (I’m thinking “no”.) (Now that I think about it, Silverberg’s Thorns wouldn’t be a bad choice, either. Looks like the paperback containing both of them isn’t a cheap find like some old paperbacks, though.)
stranger in a strange land by robert heinlein (or anything else by him)
the man in the high castle or do androids dream of electric sheep by philip k dick.
Unless the version of 1984 you gave her was the G-rated version, it’s too late. There’s a passage where Winston contemplates doing a number of cruel things to Julia, at a time when he thinks she’s stalking him.
Both have loads of grisly death though… but very little in the way of sex. Both are more about the logistics of surviving with a few odd twists and turns beyond zombies. Fanfiction.net has loads more dystopian type stories for free to read.
Send her for an existentialism jaunt, maybe? At 15 I read Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and Sartre’s “The Wall.” “The Yellow Wallpaper” isn’t super-existentialist but had a big effect on me at that age.
You want a modern dystopic story? I think Singing My Sister Down might qualify; in any case, it’s a beautiful and absolutely chilling story.
The Road is phenomenal, but I’m not sure that a 14yo is going to be equipped to handle it–and I say that having just recommended Sartre and Kafka, so take it at that level :). The story’s central love story, a father’s love for a son in the face of certain despair, might not be as moving until you’re older.
I’ll second the Octavia Butler recommendation. Parable of the Sower is very, very good, but Butler suffers from making her parable too unsubtle by half: the nation in her novel is led by a racist xenophobe whose campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again.”
Thanks for all the suggestions, I’m compiling a list right now.
The stories don’t HAVE to be dystopian but that’s what she was asking about. I gave her Ender’s Game to see how she likes that but she hasn’t started it yet. Because it’s a great story.
She’s pretty good about self censoring but I don’t want her to have to drop something obviously inappropriate, because just as obviously, I’ll be giving her some books that I haven’t read myself.
I remember that, sort of, but I can’t remember how graphic it was or was not exactly. Even so, it’ll have to stay, she’s in high school and that is one I want her to read.
John Wyndham made a career out of what Aldiss called “cosy catastrophes” - the best ones are* Day of the Triffids* and The Chrysalids. The end is averted in The Midwich Cuckoos, though.
I would not give* the Sparrow* to a 14 y.o if sexual violence is a concern, as the OP indicates…
The repeated alien butt rape of the priest and his mutilation isn’t exactly glossed over
