quarta-feira, 16 de março de 2011

Review: "The Facility"

Review: This book has the most "what the hell?!?" beggining I've ever read. It's not the kind of thriller I usually read, but I've seen a lot of movies in the genre. This is a story that is scary by how easily it could become real. Not wanting to reveal too much, this story takes place in an alternate reality, in a Great Britain dominated by a government that, having been democratically elected, uses anti-terrorist legislation to enforce a totalitarist government since, with those laws, they can pretty much do whatever they want.

The story starts with Arthur Priestley's interrogation. He has been kidnapped but he doesn't know by whom or why, and this interrogation is what I refer to when I talk about a "what the hell?!?" beggining. I mean, those questions, without context (since it's the beggining of the book), with such a raw language, were enought to keep me hooked... It became impossible for me to drop it without knowing what was going on.

The chapters alternate the different perspectives of the main characters in the story: Arthur who, after being kidnapped and interrogated is sent to a government facility that is nothing more than a prison, without being told what he's charged of; Julia, his wife, who seeks Tom Clarke, a journalist who is critical about the government and it's politics, to help her find her husband; and Henry Graves, the facility manager, a man torn between duty and doing the right thing.

We quickly realise all the men and women prisioners at the facility have one thing in common (well, almost all of them, since Arthur is "inocent") but it's impossible to comprehend how could that possible justify their incarceration.

It's a scary story because, nowadays, and mostly after 9/11, countries have adopted tighter anti-terrorism legislation, and that makes us wonder if that legislation could be used to justify actions that have nothing to do with fighting terrorism. But, at the same time, it felt unreal how easily the government subdued the population and the media. I like to think that, if this really happened, we wouldn't go down quietly and without a fight.

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This book (uncorrected proof) was provided to me by UK and Beyond Book Tours for a review.

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