Review: The Declaration by Gemma Malley

The Declaration appears on our list of young adult dystopian fiction, which you can view here.

My name is Anna. My name is Anna and I shouldnt be here. I shouldnt exist. But I do.

I felt a little misinformed when I began to read Gemma Malleys'The Declaration. The jacket copy for this book is very coy, and I dont feel does the book justice at all. While were given a hint at the theme with terms such as being born being seen as illicit, and references to the outside world, the blurb tries to pique interest through being vague, which is not always the best way to get a reader to pick up one book over the hundreds of others clamouring for attention. Fortunately, The Declaration looked pretty, was on sale, and came armed with a series of cover quotes from sources I trust.

Reminiscent of Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale, and Harry Harrisons Make Room! Make Room!, The Declaration is a near-future young adult novel set in a world where people no longer die of old age. Of course, the consequences of this is the huge strain on the worlds resources, as well as massive overcrowding. However, rather than turning to eating people as in Soylent Green (the famous film based loosely on the Harry Harrison novel mentioned above), Malley has made it a crime for anyone to have a child unless they have opted out of the longevity treatments. All children who are born to parents who have not opted out are considered surplus, and essentially considered non-humans.

The story revolves around young Anna, who is a prefect in the Grange Hall surplus training facility. Anna, who has been indoctrinated into the surplus as rightless ideology, has no desire to achieve anything other than a high degree of utility for her future masters. However, all of this changes when Peter is captured by surplus hunters and is taken in by the facility. Peter is convinced that Anna has a life outside the facility, and is determined to make her see the short-sightedness and cruelty of the longevity laws.

The Declaration is an eerie book of a future that might very well be our own. Malleys depiction of the near-future scenario is harsh and unabating, and there are several scenes that are quite frankly awful in their harshness and violence. Where you would expect the author to quietly close the door on a distressing incident and let the reader imagine the rest, she instead writes it bluntly and explicitly. This unflinching frankness is key to the books success, I think. The Declaration suffers from a slow start and a bit of eye-rolling coincidence in terms of how certain people are linked together throughout the narrative, but it is rescued by Malleys bleak matter-of-factness, which never dips into anything maudlin or twee. While there are certainly some plot points that seem a little too neat, and the Constant Capitalisation of Almost Every Noun is torture on the eyes, The Declaration is an intriguing dystopic novel that refuses to give in to an uplifting Spielbergian conclusion but instead runs its course bluntly and honestly.

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