The Transition: A Novel

Absolute belter, this.
Unsettling, thought-provoking, mildly terrifying as well as laugh-out-loud funny in places.
The ending won't be for everyone. Had me swearing at the walls.

Well, I don't know... I don't know where to begin with this one. When you finish a book and the first thing that comes to your mind is "I won't write a review on this one", then things are quite bleak. The two stars are for the effort and the fact that Karl was an acceptable character in an array of cardboard cutouts, in a story that wanted to be "dystopian" because the genre is currently fashionable. Honestly, perhaps authors should give it a rest and try their luck with a different subject. Dystopian novels require immense capabilities on the part of the author. In my opinion, Kennard would be excellent in a psychological or domestic drama. The dystopian universe, however, is very demanding....

Our main characters are Karl and show more Genevieve, a young married couple. Karl has failed to fulfill his tax obligations and the two have no alternative but to sign up as participants in a shady organization called "The Transition". They start living in the house of Stu and Janna, another highly dysfunctional couple, they're stripped of their wages, their privacy, even the right to choose their food each day. One day, Karl decides that enough is enough. The problem is that when I reached that point, I had stopped caring.

Karl is somewhat sympathetic and guilty for certain miscalculated financial choices. He doesn't really try to make amends and behaves as if the solution will be miraculously given to him on a silver platter. Genevieve is horrible. Highly unlikable, irrational, stupid, hiding her selfishness and insecurities behind the "mental issues" smoke screen. She is so devoid of any kind of feeling that I felt she was quite a bit unrealistic and couldn't take her seriously. Moreover, the writer puts some pretty ugly words about the teaching profession in her mouth that disgusted me and infuriated me. Stu and Janna are completely unimpressive even though they're supposed too be the main antagonists. Just no....

I fear the writing wasn't what I expect to find in a book. There were a few moments of brightness and coherence, but for the most part, the dialogue was poor, the implications of the characters' choices led to nothing and the themes that Kennard chose to communicate were probably too much for his abilities. The conclusion of the story was weak, rushed, anemic. It left me feeling nothing and a dystopian novel shouldn't do that.

A friend told me that the plot reminded him of Atwood's "The Heart Goes Last" which I am planning to start very soon. But mentioning Atwood here is sacrilege. Many reviewers seem to like "The Transition". To me, this wasn't a good Dystopian novel. It wasn't even a good book. I felt no coming threat, everything was too predictable, too "soft", too horrible Netflix -inspired dialogue and an overall poor execution. And once again, I cannot help but wonder how many more wannabe -Dystopian novels does our world need?

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This was broken into 10, 15-minute segments. The story held my attention more or less until the end, which was anti-climactic. The book was delivered as sort of a thriller, but now I wonder if it's supposed to be more of a statement on society, relationships... something to make us take a deeper look at ourselves. Or maybe it's supposed to be a modern romance? Because my reaction to the end was sort of, "Oh.... Okay." Yesss??? And then...?? The focus of the ending seemed to be more on the relationship between Genevieve and Karl, rather than what The Transition was really up to. It just didn't really go anywhere. The story got a little sketchy in the middle as well, but perhaps that was due to having to cut out so much of it.

On an aside, show more I've come across a lot of stories lately where two similar characters also have similar names. Why are authors doing that? Is it a thing amongst writers these days? In this book, we have the two main characters Janna and Genevieve. The names actually look substantially different in print, so I can sort of excuse the author in this case, but when you're only listening to the story, they're very similar. In most cases, it's more egregious, such as in The Story of a New Name, the main characters are Lila and Lena. Very annoying. show less

Like an echo of The Marriage Pact but with very different themes but with very similar themes.

2.5 stars