REVIEW: The Postmortal by Drew Magary

104. The Postmortal by Drew Magary
Publication: Penguin (Non-Classics) (August 30, 2011), Paperback, 384pp / ISBN 0143119826
Genre: Fiction (Sci-fi, sort of)

Read: August 27-28, 2011
Source: Publisher (thank you!)

Summary from B&N:

John Farrell is about to get “The Cure.”
Old age can never kill him now.
The only problem is, everything else still can . . .

Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors. Witty, eerie, and full of humanity, The Postmortal is an unforgettable thriller that envisions a pre-apocalyptic world so real that it is completely terrifying.

Review

You know how The Magicians is basically like a “literary fantasy” novel? Well, The Postmortal is basically like a “literary sci-fi” novel, and it knows it. I mostly enjoyed reading The Postmortal– it was scary and kind of exciting and also really disgusting, in a way– but it had this self-awareness to it that I didn’t like.

I’ve never read a literary sci-fi novel before (that I’m aware of), but it was an interesting experience. It was more “realistic” than a lot of sci-fi novels are, I think. There was no space exploration, only minimal technological advances (besides the cure for aging), and basically everything sucked. The most interesting part, to me, was how everywhere on Earth things slowly devolved into a dystopia. You’d think that the cure for aging would be awesome, right? It’s not. It’s only awesome if only a few people don’t age and die– if everyone does it, things take a turn for the suck.

In that sense The Postmortal is a lot like The Magicians, only instead of telling us that living in a fantasy world isn’t that amazing, The Postmortal is telling us that living forever (or nearly) isn’t that amazing, either.

The author

Normally when sci-fi goes into its “in the future everyone will live for a long time and have no sicknesses” it also has a space component, because obviously if no-one’s dying then we need to leave Earth before, well…before The Postmortal happens. Normally, I think, advances in health care are followed by advances in technology (or the other way around), but in The Postmortal everyone lives forever and then they get nothing else done because they’re too busy partying. The tech fifty years from now is basically the same tech we have now, only slightly upgraded, and I kind of think that’s…wrong? I mean, would everyone really be too busy boozing it up to not come up with a fix for lack of water/food/whatever? So much so that the only solution is to kill people off to lessen the population count?

Anyway, the other thing I didn’t like was how ALL the female characters were Chicks, and all of them (but one) died horrible deaths. Which really stinks, and which really annoyed me. I don’t think it helped that John also annoyed me, and that the ending was so sentimentally sappy that it seemed like it was from a different book entirely.

So: literary smugness, dead female characters everywhere, cynical view of humanity, and an annoying protagonist. What’s good about The Postmortal?

Well, it made me not want to live longer than I’m already going to, so I guess that’s good. It’s written in the form of blog posts, which is interesting and surprisingly effective (at least until the ending sequence). It’s enthralling in that watching-a-car-wreck-happening sort of way. The (really dark) humor edged into absurdism, which I liked. And for all that many of the characters stunk, the plot itself was really good.

I wasn’t all that satisfied when I finished reading The Postmortal, but I also didn’t want to throw it against the wall. It didn’t make me happy, and in fact it pissed me off a few times, but neither did it make me miserable. By that I’m assuming that literary sci-fi just isn’t my thing, but that if it’s your thing you might like The Postmortal more than I did.

Rating

It was okay. The high points slightly made up for the low points, but not enough to make me like it more.

Buy

Get your own copy @ Amazon or BookDepository.com and support Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog through the power of affiliate earnings!

Other reviews

Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review: “I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was as grim and depressing as ‘The Postmortal’ and was as compelling a read at the same time. Drew Magary sets the ‘Post Cure’ world on a downward spiral that is plausible in almost every detail and flows in an inevitably smooth manner as a result. I literally couldn’t put this one down to the extent that I spent hours reading ‘The Postmortal’ without even realising that the time was going. ”

Kay’s Bookshelf: “I hadn’t heard about this book prior to seeing it on NetGalley, but I thought the premise interesting enough to be worth a try. And I am not sorry if I did, as it sort of matched my own worries (of getting old, of overpopulation, of resources draining out), so I spent half the book feeling envious of the people who got “the cure”, and the other half freaked out by the end of the world scenario the author imagined, a scenario that unfortunately I could actually see happening in real life in a few decades or so.”

A Librarian’s Life in Books: “The book blurb provided by Goodreads pegged this as “witty,” and while that is not untrue, perhaps a more accurate synonym would be apt or shrewd. There wasn’t anything to laugh at in Magary’s novel, and so the connotations of “witty” just don’t fit. Additionally, the cover is a bit misleading in my opinion. It sort of makes me wonder if anyone on the marketing side of publishing actually reads the books they try to market. Because this is a great book, but holy smokes did I have the wrong perception based on cover and blurb.”

Notes

I had this whole other rant on how every woman (except one) in this book either wants to get pregnant or IS pregnant, and how every man (except one) doesn’t want to get married but every woman DOES, but I’ve ranted too much already and, really, there are other things to worry about besides gender stereotypes in a book I’m already ambivalent about.