On “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin **

This has been on my too-read list for years; unfortunately, it was quite a big disappointment. In part, this book suffered from The Godfather complex. By that I mean that so many other works that came after this book use similar tropes that the “original” hardly seems all that innovative or exciting, so while it might be the classic or the first, as a reader coming to it late, it reads as derivative. Not only that, but it doesn't read well.

The book is about a man working for the United State. Everyone works for the state. There is a kind of group think. Outside the state are revolutionaries, aiming for individuality. The man, like all other citizens, is simply a number. No one bears names. They all work for the good of the state. Until . . . The man falls in love with another person. Now, they work to break the system. Numbers: think Lucas's THX 1138; omnipotent, omniscient state with clandestine love affair: think 1984. Unlike those works, however, I never found myself caring about the characters. The writing was emotionally over the top; at the same time, it was hard to follow, and the fact that I fairly early on gave up caring meant I didn't try hard. A synopsis on Wikipedia explained most of what I'd gathered and little of what I hadn't (go there for the real synopsis).

Spoiler: It doesn't end well. Just as you think the revolutionaries might pull it off, the man himself reverts to be interested in supporting the state, soaking up its drug. It betrays his lover. The state wins. One can, I suppose, take the comments from the man's lover as holding hope out—namely, that revolutions never stop. A state might have total control, but eventually someone overthrows it. There is no end to that. We just don't see that overthrow in this story.