Suicide Club: A story about living - Softcover

Heng, Rachel

3.22

4,455 ratings by Goodreads

9781473672918: Suicide Club: A story about living

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1473672910 ISBN 13: 9781473672918

Publisher: Sceptre, 2018

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They leave us no choice.

Always look both ways before you cross the road. Get a 9 to 5 job . Exercise for 30 minutes every day. Do not eat bread. Do not eat sugar. Do yoga. Do meditate. Never raise your voice. Always smile, even if you feel like dying.

What are you doing to help yourself?
What are you doing to show that you're worth the resources?

Some time in the near future, thanks to medical technology HealthTechTM, immortality is now within humanity's grasp. But faced with declining economic productivity, falling birth rates and a severely aging population, the Ministry has become the all-powerful arbiter of how healthcare resources are allocated.

Resources accrue to 'lifers', those predisposed for a life expected to be lived healthily well beyond a hundred years old. Some factors that determine lifer status are genetically incidental - but there are other, more intangible factors that are within individuals' control: the degree to which they are 'life-loving' and self-caring. Non-lifers are known as 'sub-100s': individuals with no potential for longevity and deemed a waste of HealthTechTM resources.

The Suicide Club hasn't always been an activist group. Initially, it was a group of disillusioned lifers, gathering to indulge in forbidden, hedonistic activities: performances of live music, traditional meals of the most artery-clogging kind, irresponsible orgies . . . You name it. Now branded terrorists, anyone found guilty of wanting the right to die as they choose will find themselves fast-tracked to the Third Wave and condemned to immortality. . .

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Review:

Life-affirming . . . "Be careful what you wish for" has never been so chilling, or so gripping (Erin Kelly, author of HE SAID/SHE SAID)

We raced through this addictive take on the modern obsession with youth and perfection (Fabulous Magazine, Sun)

Original and subversive (Independent)

An intriguing idea in which Heng takes a much-needed swipe at health fascism and our obsession with youth, beauty and superfoods (Mail on Sunday)

A complicated and promising debut that spoofs the current health culture craze even as it anticipates its appalling culmination. (Kirkus)

Rachel Heng's highly readable debut novel is thought-provoking, moving, worryingly convincing - and ultimately hopeful (Irish Times)

A provocative new author. A fascinating debut novel. Read it! (Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy)

Clever, bold and makes you think about the value of life (Good Housekeeping)

Suicide Club bends genre with grace and artistry, delivering us to the outermost reaches of what's familiar and affirming what dares to still exist there: family, friendship, and forgiveness. With superb writing, Rachel Heng has crafted a world inside of a world gone mad, one where love faces its most difficult test. This is an exciting, bold, inventive novel. (Kristen Iskandrian, author of MOTHEREST)

The future is here. Let's welcome one of its stars. Talented and ferociously intelligent, Heng has produced a glittering debut (Joanna Briscoe, author of YOU)

Book Description:

SUICIDE CLUB, by Rachel Heng, is set in a near-future New York, where life expectancy averages three hundred years and the pursuit of immortality has become all-consuming for the genetically superior.

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