The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman

January 5, 2009 at 12:55 pm (Ms. Ryan's Reviews, Science Fiction)

At first this might seem like yet another story with a creepy, overbearing government  controlling the minds and lives of its citizens (think The Giver, The Declaration, The White Mountains, The Matrix), but The Other Side of the Island is full of original language, plot twists, and an impressive, believable cast of characters. In the eighteenth year of Enclosure, way after the flood, a girl named Honor moves with her parents to the Island 365 in the Tranquil Sea. There, she learns about Earth Mother and her glorious plan to regulate the weather and maintain peace among her people. Earth Mother is even building an enclosure over the land so that no more storms can decimate the population as they did during the great flood.

But as always in this sort of novel, there’s a group of secret resistance fighters who don’t want Earth Mother to control them; they don’t trust her and they don’t believe she really has their best interests at heart. Among these fighters are Honor’s parents who, to her horror, refuse to follow the strict rules of this society and even have a second child when only one per family is permitted. To compensate, Honor tries to be the perfect student and citizen, earning all A’s in school and obeying every command her teachers make. Unfortunately, Honor’s efforts to fit in aren’t enough to save her parents. One day when she comes home from school, the house is empty. Her parents are gone. And people who disappear on Island 365 don’t ever come back.