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Divided Kingdom (2005)

von Rupert Thomson

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3561271,855 (3.4)8
It is winter, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night. He learns that he is the victim of an extraordinary experiment. In an attempt to reform society, the government has divided the population into four groups, each representing a different personality type. The land, too, has been divided into quarters. Borders have been established, reinforced by concrete walls, armed guards and rolls of razor wire. Plunged headlong into this brave new world, the boy tries to make the best of things, unaware that ahead of him lies a truly explosive moment, a revelation that will challenge everything he believes in and will, in the end, put his very life in jeopardy...… (mehr)
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The premise of this novel is that a nation hopelessly divided by internecine strife, presumably the UK, divides itself into four nations, whose inhabitants are assigned to one of them according to a psychological profile based upon the four medieval physiological humors. Intercourse between the nations is strictly controlled, save for a group which the authorities believe defy classification. Called Achromatics, they constitute a sort of Dalit class; harassed and despised, they live on the margins but have the right to travel between the nations. That's one impressive premise and the author delivers in spades. His protagonist is a civil servant who has been removed from his parents as a child and assigned to the sanguine nation, but who develops a wanderlust whilst attending a conference in the phlegmatic nation, instilled in him by visits to a sort of virtual reality site therein which allows him to revisit the most idyllic moments of his life. However, exigency intrudes, and he finds himself forced into an odyssey which sends him on a wander through all four nations, sometimes in the company of Achromatics. The book is a surreal picaresque delight throughout its ramblings, somehow extremely believable amidst all the magic realism.. ( )
1 abstimmen Big_Bang_Gorilla | Nov 30, 2021 |
Intriguing idea but the author doesn't really do anything with it. And obviously if you think about the proposal of segregating people by class geographically for longer than 30 seconds it's rather absurd. OK, they call it humours but it's just class, like we have today except without border guards. Who's going to clean the houses of all the upper class in the red quarter? But I would've gone with it if there was any story to go with it. ( )
  Paul_S | Dec 23, 2020 |
Sometimes I just can't turn my brain off. I mean, just shut up and enjoy the story already!

The concept here is a good one, the United Kingdom, Great Britain, though it's never referred to as that, is drastically reorganized and divided into four separate states based on psychological profiles, which are in turn based on the ancient theory of the four body humors: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. There are further names and meanings and symbols, but they're unimportant for my purposes.

My problem is that my mind started to wonder how they divided the UK into four parts, especially after Thomas, our protagonist, mentions London, not so named of course, having been quartered. How?

HOW!?

How would that be possible and not have some of those divided sections be 'islands' in the middle of another territory? It's madness! Every city and town and region has been renamed as well and, given how young Thomas was when the Reorganization occurred, he naturally doesn't remember or refer to the original names.

A Utopian/Dystopian novel shouldn't be read that literally though. That's not the point. I know, but I can't help myself. When I saw Disney's 'Cars' I was struck by a thought and whispered to my friend half-way through the movie, thoroughly ruining the entire experience, I'm told. That thought was: "What kind of car was Jesus?" I mean, their whole biology and geology is based around automobiles, and yet the town's oldest resident is a Tin Lizzy....were they a symbiotic species with horses? If so, where are they now? Was Jesus a donkey cart?

But we're talking about 'Divided Kingdom'. Thomson plays around with a lot of theories about human nature and our collective untapped potential. Despite my most basic HOW? objections to how any of this functions, international relations for one thing are completely ignored, I found myself curious as to how Thompson imagined a society divided into such four extremes, and the fifth that inevitably would fall between the cracks.

But as soon as things fall into a good pace, that last third is a page-turner, and I begin to accept and encourage the outlandish, it all wraps itself up nicely, and ends.

Not that there aren't unanswered questions, because, oh yeah, I've got a barrel, but it's all from the satisfied musings of the main character. And though I feel he hasn't come around enough for me to trust his satisfaction, there are no other sign-posts, so we're supposed to take it as it is.

What we have is a light psychological experiment novel, and one that doesn't get much deeper than the surface. I have questions, but I'll forget all about them before tomorrow. ( )
  ManWithAnAgenda | Feb 18, 2019 |
Fascinatingly unique take on the dystopian genre. Thomson makes a somewhat outlandish idea believable, thought provoking, and chilling. ( )
  Chamblyman | May 20, 2018 |
Fascinatingly unique take on the dystopian genre. Thomson makes a somewhat outlandish idea believable, thought provoking, and chilling. ( )
  Chamblyman | May 19, 2018 |
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It is winter, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night. He learns that he is the victim of an extraordinary experiment. In an attempt to reform society, the government has divided the population into four groups, each representing a different personality type. The land, too, has been divided into quarters. Borders have been established, reinforced by concrete walls, armed guards and rolls of razor wire. Plunged headlong into this brave new world, the boy tries to make the best of things, unaware that ahead of him lies a truly explosive moment, a revelation that will challenge everything he believes in and will, in the end, put his very life in jeopardy...

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