I throughly enjoy books like The
Society of Others. This book borrows its tone from other works by Kafka
and The Giver by
Lois Lowry. Set in the non-plausible society of a modern eastern European
country, Nicholson wants badly to have a tyrannical government to use as a protagonist,
but in reality comes up short in the post-Soviet era. Not that this is really
the point.
Our hero, a 22 year old English slacker, doesn’t care about anything or anyone.
He hitches a ride and finds himself in the aforementioned country where he participates
on all sides of the current revolution. Ultimately finding not only that life
is worth living, but that others are worth living for, too, the hero is meant to be
an antidote to the slacker, me-first mentality of the 1990s.
This book spins some improbable themes together to make its point, but all-in-all it
does so successfully.