Mockingbird [Hardcover]

This novel has been seared into my memory since the moment I picked it up and turned the first page. Tevis is a masterful storyteller. At the time I read it in the early 00's, I had been taking a summer class to make up some credits for my history degree, and thought taking a "dystopian fiction" English class sounded interesting. Turns out I wasn't disappointed. There were a few other gems I read that summer, and I've been in love with the genre ever since. But Mockingbird really sticks with me.

Many of the scenes I recall from the novel are so vivid...but it is the more disturbing messages that Tevis was trying to convey through this masterpiece that really cut me to the bone. Robert Spofforth, the human/android that is all too human, who desires the world to die so that he might die, is one of the more fascinating (and disturbing) characters I've ever encountered in fiction. I've always found myself sympathizing with Spofforth even though he is a repugnant abomination, not quite human, not quite machine,but something in between, whose deep melancholy (and latent anger against the humanity which created him) is somehow touching, but chilling, all at the same time.

A magnificent novel that everyone should take up without delay. You won't be disappointed. Tevis' grasp of language and his central message about the value of human emotion in the face of technological error and decay has lost none of its potency today.

When I was younger, I read a lot of books, not the ones other kids would read, because I knew the super ones when I spotted them, and my friends were not reading super books. I eventually read less and less, and besides required reading for English classes, I didn't read much, because I couldn't seem to find a book that caught my interest. I'd read the first couple chapters of books that were just altogether uninteresting, and would shelve them. I bought Mockingbird on a whim, having liked Nicolas Roeg and David Bowie, two of my biggest idols, that were, incidentally, pitted together for "The Man Who Fell to Earth," a movie I like a lot, which was based off of Walter Tevis' book, The Man Who Fell to Earth. So I got Mockingbird in the mail, hoping it would be the book to set me back in reading gear, opening it from it's package with delight, and with a ready feeling to read. "In the far future, love is the only hope," read the inset, and this was a great love story. It was the book that I finally got stuck with and I couldn't stop reading it. I'd read it in the hallway during my Photo class when I didn't have any thing to do. I'd read it after a test. I'd read it on the couch while my family watched TV. It reminded me of Farenheit 451, but I found Mockingbird to be a far more picturesque dystopia, and it got me from the start because it didn't have to blossom the way F451 did. Comparing this to F451 also creates a chain, since Nicolas Roeg did photography for the movie version of F451, and as previously stated, directed the Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis, who wrote Mockingbird. The characters still get the Guy Montag effect, while the rest of the world is drugged and oblivious to every thing, keeping privacy. This book is full of adventure, and in an illiterate future where it's illegal to live among other people, the joy Paul feels from learning to read, and the knowledge he gets of a past of families and seeing silent films with people interacting has made me feel an importance to reading. The love story that unfolds through Paul's teaching Mary Lou to read, and their shared liking to books while sharing a living space makes for a great feeling to want to make my own real life love story. There couldn't have been a better scenario than this though; coming from characters that didn't even know what love was, finding out together, or separated.

This is a great book. I'm currently a high school senior (as of Spring 2004). Most likely, I haven't completely read 7 novels since I was concieved; but this book has sparked a new interest in literature within me. It brings up a lot of issues that were and are relevant in society. Anyone who likes Sci-Fi must read this book! I highly recommend this read!