Auther : Lauren Oliver
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN : 0062112430
ISBN13 : 9780062112439
Pages : 480
List Price : $17.99 $10.39 ( on Dec 30, 2011 )
Book Rating :
Product Description
Ninety-five days, and then I’ll be safe.
I wonder whether the procedure will hurt.
I want to get it over with.
It’s hard to be patient.
It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched me yet.
Still, I worry.
They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness.
The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.
Lauren Oliver astonished readers with her stunning debut, Before I Fall. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it “raw, emotional, and, at times, beautiful. An end as brave as it is heartbreaking.” Her much-awaited second novel fulfills her promise as an exceptionally talented and versatile writer.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011: Lena Haloway is content in her safe, government-managed society. She feels (mostly) relaxed about the future in which her husband and career will be decided, and looks forward to turning 18, when she’ll be cured of deliria, a.k.a. love. She tries not to think about her mother’s suicide (her last words to Lena were a forbidden “I love you”) or the supposed “Invalid” community made up of the uncured just beyond her Portland, Maine, border. There’s no real point—she believes her government knows how to best protect its people, and should do so at any cost. But 95 days before her cure, Lena meets Alex, a confident and mysterious young man who makes her heart flutter and her skin turn red-hot. As their romance blossoms, Lena begins to doubt the intentions of those in power, and fears that her world will turn gray should she submit to the procedure. In this powerful and beautifully written novel, Lauren Oliver, the bestselling author of Before I Fall, throws readers into a tightly controlled society where options don’t exist, and shows not only the lengths one will go for a chance at freedom, but also the true meaning of sacrifice. --Jessica Schein
Lauren Oliver’s Delirium Playlist
In Delirium, the government requires that all teenagers be cured of love, a.k.a. deliria, to keep society safe. But 95 days before her treatment, Lena Haloway falls for a boy--and must face the truth about her own feelings and the world in which she lives.
In this exclusive playlist, Lauren Oliver shares the songs that capture this haunting novel about the power of love and what one will risk in order to keep it.
Gayle Forman is is a self-described "perpetual teenager" and an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous publications. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children. She is the author of Where She Went and If I Stay. Recently she sat down with Lauren Oliver to discuss their work. Read the resulting interview below, or turn the tables to see what happened when Lauren interviewed Gayle.
From Gayle Forman: Lauren Oliver is kind of mind-blowing. She wrote her intensely moving debut, Before I Fall when she was 26, which seems impossible given the book’s depth and wisdom. She followed up with the deliciously provocative love story Delirium, the first of a trilogy, and her first middle-grade book, Liesl & Po comes out in the fall of 2011. On top of that, she’s constantly cooking up book ideas for her literary development company. Somehow, she managed to slow down long enough for us to talk shop over lunch in our mutual hometown, Brooklyn.
Gayle: You have like 100 balls in the air. Are you one of those people who thrives on an insane amount of activity?
Lauren: I’ve been busy and overextended my whole life. I wrote half of Before I Fall while I had a full-time job, was a full-time grad student, and worked part-time in a nightclub. I wrote the first half of the book on my phone on the subway. I’d email the chapters to myself.
Gayle: You wrote the book on your phone?
Lauren: It’s very rare that I write on my computer. A lot of times I’m writing on subways or in the back of cabs or on airplanes. I know the exact quantity of lines on my BlackBerry and how it relates to word count.
Gayle: Well, that brings me right to my question about process. How does an idea become a book for you? How did Delirium arrive?
Lauren: I’d read an essay by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that said that all great books are either about death or love and I’d already written about death. And I started thinking that I’d never written a love story. It was out of my comfort zone. The next day I was at the gym, and the TV was on and the news report was all about the swine flu epidemic. It was the latest in the flu scares. And I thought it was so weird how easily people become panicked. You can convince people that anything is an epidemic. So much is propaganda. And the two ideas just combined in my head. And the character of Lena started narrating immediately.
Gayle: Moral of the story, budding writers: Go to the gym.
Lauren: Most of my breakthrough ideas come at the gym or while showering.
Gayle: Me too! And I’ll run out and start writing and be dripping in a towel.
Lauren: I’ve actually ruined computers that way. I think what happens is punctuated equilibrium: a period when changes are accumulating but not visibly, the simmering is happening. Then, when your mind is very relaxed, what was unconscious becomes conscious.
Gayle: On the surface, there’s a very big leap between your first two books. Before I Fall follows Sam, a prototypical mean girl who has to relive the last day of her life while Delirium follows Lena who lives in a creepy world in which love has been outlawed. But really, both of these girls start out conformists and challenge the constraints on their lives.
Lauren: Transformation is very important to me. I definitely am very interested in how people become who they are. In change. In characters who are damaged who and who feel initially unlovable—and in their redemption through feelings of love.
Gayle: Who are you more like, Lena or Sam?
Lauren: Sam is more similar to how I was in high school. I was rebellious. I went out and partied and did all the bad things that she did. Lena is just… she’s so obedient and so scared of doing anything wrong. I was so fond of her. I kind of loved her in this way, I felt so protective of her. She’s so fragile and also brave.
Gayle: That was exactly how I felt about Mia in If I Stay. I loved the strength of both Sam and Lena, in relation to their love interests. Even in Delirium, where Alex is the one who sparks Lena’s rebellion, she’s no damsel in distress.
Lauren: I don’t believe in damsels. That’s not a model of femininity or heroism I subscribe to. Everyone has to learn to save themselves. It can be through the mechanisms of loving other people but you have to learn to save yourself.
Gayle: Dystopian fiction is very hot right now. Did you have any idea you’d be on the cutting edge of this trend?
Lauren: I never heard that word when I wrote Delirium. I mean, I knew what it meant but not as a category. Delirium is supposed to be a meditation on love, what it does, good and bad. Because there have been times when if I could have reached inside to take out my own heart out, I would’ve. Books can’t come from categories; they come from a desire to say something about the world.
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Delirium: The Special Edition Reviews
| 173 of 204 people found the following review helpful:  Not for me, This review is from: Delirium (Hardcover) Most reviewers have mentioned Lauren Oliver's beautiful writing, and it really is beautiful. She writes like seasoned pro. I read her sentences and thought that here is a woman who was truly born to write. But, as beautifully constructed the sentences may have been, they added up to a story that just didn't do it for me. I personally gravitate more toward the faster-paced books. I like to be grabbed by a story immediately. Delirium is definitely not a fast-paced book. At over four hundred pages and only the introductory part of a projected trilogy, the pacing of this story is, perhaps expectedly, sloooow. I felt every one of those 400+ pages. The entire story follows Lena as she very gradually comes to terms with the realities of her dystopian world. This is to be expected. It is the first book in a dystopian trilogy, so naturally the first book is the "awakening" part of the story. It may just be me, but I often find these books boring. I want to get to the... Read more 48 of 62 people found the following review helpful:  If you liked the world of THE HUNGER GAMES, you'll want to read DELIRIUM, By This review is from: Delirium (Hardcover) Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy The hook for DELIRIUM is brilliant. Amor Deliria Nervosa. Every single man, woman, and child lives in fear of contracting this deadly disease. Every aspect of society has been restructured around this idea. The government's authority and control is total including gender segregation, media censorship, and brainwashing indoctrination. Basically the US is under a kind of Sharia Law. "It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure. Everyone else in my family has had the procedure already. My older sister, Rachel, has been disease-free for nine years now. She's been safe from love for so long, she says she can't even remember its symptoms. I'm scheduled to have my procedure in exactly ninety-five days, on September 3rd. My birthday."- Opening from DELIRIUM We experience this world through the eyes of... Read more 42 of 54 people found the following review helpful: Hunger Games it is not, By AC (USA) - See all my reviews This review is from: Delirium (Hardcover) WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND IN THE BELOW REVIEW. Delirium, Delirium, Delirium, let me see, what can I say about you that doesn't involve laments of failed expectations, fits of insurmountable rage, and copious amounts of hair-tearing? Really, you started out wonderfully, with prose that, if not ground breaking, was at least nice and beautiful at times. You had a great character in Hana, who, by FAR, was my favorite in the entire book. You had a decent lead in Lena, who, if not very interesting, seemed to at least hold her own in life. Well.........on second thought, not really. In the beginning, she panics at the slightest thought of disobedience, which really annoyed me, although I get that you were trying to convey the depth of her unquestioning faith in her society, and contrast that with her eventual change of heart and disillusionment with her faux-utopia. Still. Don't you think the story might have been bucketloads more interesting had Hana been the main... Read more |
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