From Amazon.com
This brilliantly ironic satire is set in a future world where television and computers are connected directly into people's brains when they are babies. The result is a chillingly recognizable consumer society where empty-headed kids are driven by fashion and shopping and the avid pursuit of silly entertainment--even on trips to Mars and the moon--and by constant customized murmurs in their brains of encouragement to buy, buy, buy.
Anderson gives us this world through the voice of a boy who, like everyone around him, is almost completely inarticulate, whose vocabulary, in a dead-on parody of the worst teenspeak, depends heavily on three words: "like," "thing," and the second most common English obscenity. He's even made this vapid kid a bit sympathetic, as a product of his society who dimly knows something is missing in his head. The details are bitterly funny--the idiotic but wildly popular sitcom called "Oh? Wow! Thing!", the girls who have to retire to the ladies room a couple of times an evening because hairstyles have changed, the hideous lesions on everyone that are not only accepted, but turned into a fashion statement. And the ultimate awfulness is that when we finally meet the boy's parents, they are just as inarticulate and empty-headed as he is, and their solution to their son's problem is to buy him an expensive car.
Although there is a danger that at first teens may see the idea of brain-computers as cool, ultimately they will recognize this as a fascinating novel that says something important about their world. (Ages 14 and older) --Patty Campbell
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
Books in Canada
Imagine a world where a computer implant sends endless banner ads streaming directly into your head along with the very latest pop songs, fashion tips, news stories, television programs of every kind and snippets of the most trivial and utterly meaningless information and chat with your friends through mind links. In this world who you are and how you live is totally determined by what you buy; you're no longer an individual, but a lifelong product point where everything that you'll ever know is completely controlled by the mega-corporations that pump out the ongoing feeds of information. This is the world that M.T. Anderson has brilliantly conjured in Feed, his breathtakingly chilling new novel for teen readers. Titus and his buddies are taking a meg break from SchoolT, visiting the moon to have a bit of fun. Titus is hoping to meet someone and he doesViolet, the most beautiful girl he has ever encountered, and, amazingly, the interest is mutual. But overall the moon sucks, especially when Titus, Violet and company have their feeds hacked into by The Coalition of Pity. For Titus, it's an annoying inconveniencehe's cut off from the feed for a few days, feels a little lost, especially since he's missing the latest episode of Oh? Wow! Thing! He's reconnected soon after, however, and life goes on as before. But the hacker has irreparably damaged Violet's receptor and her ability to receive the feed suddenly begins to break down as do her very basic motor functions. Titus finds himself paired with someone who's going to lose her life (and perhaps his) because of the feed. What makes the situation more terrifying is that he's unable to fathom how anyone can cope through life without feed? This is a brilliant 1984-like novel that will grip teen readers in its powerful and provocative indictment of rampaging consumerism.
Jeffrey Canton (Books in Canada)
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.