So, we’re all trapped inside for the foreseeable future and I have been preparing for this for many years by hoarding books. I have enough unread books on my shelves to keep me reading for the next decade.
If you haven’t already dipped your toes into dystopian literature – maybe now’s the time to start since we seem to be living in a dystopia.
Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction (a genre of fiction that encompasses works in which the setting is other than the real world, involving supernatural, futuristic, or other imagined elements) that began as a response to utopian fiction, which is a term coined by Sir Thomas More in 1516 with his book Utopia (Greek for no place). So we have come to understand a utopia as a perfect world – clearly not the world we are currently living in. Dystopian literature explores the dangerous effects of political and social structures on humanity’s future. When the structures that are meant to keep us safe start to break down, we are heading into dystopian territory.
According to Masterclass.com, the central themes of dystopian novels generally fall under these topics:
- Government control
- Environmental destruction
- Technological control
- Survival
- Loss of individualism
If you are interested in seeing how authors imagine a future world, there’s lots of great titles out there.
Margaret Atwood is considered one of the very best writers of dystopian literature and her novel The Handmaid’s Tale is widely regarded as one of the great dystopian novels. After some sort of environmental disaster, America has reorganized itself into a patriarchy where women are basically used as baby-makers. This novel is 35 years old, but it certainly rings true today and although I can’t say that I am huge Atwood fan, this novel is probably required reading. The sequel The Testaments was co-winner of the Booker prize last year. One Atwood book I did enjoy was Oryx and Crake, which is another book that makes you think Atwood must have had a crystal ball. It’s the first book in a trilogy about a guy named Snowman who is – seemingly – the last person alive on earth. The landscape has been devastated, there’s no food and scientists have created scary genetic mutations.
Another masterpiece of dystopian literature is Stephen King’s novel The Stand. The National Post just published an article titled “Stephen King’s The Stand (1978) is either the perfect distraction from COVID-19 or too eerily accurate to consider” The article’s author, Calum Marsh says The Stand is “an engrossing, sweat-inducing, eerily plausible 1,400-page epic about the inception and spread of an extremely deadly global pandemic, kick-started inside an underground biological testing facility in the Mojave desert and sent hurtling in all directions across the world with irrepressible speed.”
The Stand is about a deadly strain of influenza has ravaged America killing most of the population. The American government tries to cover it all up…and the fun begins.
The Stand is considered King’s masterpiece, but I have never been able to finish it – and I would consider myself a King fan…just there’s a lot of characters to keep track of in the beginning, but maybe now’s the time to give it another go because from all accounts it’s totally worth it…and hey, I’ve got the time.
The Girl With All the Gifts– M.R. Carey is a great book if zombies are your thing…and,
really, what’s more dystopian than a zombie novel. In this book ten-year-old Melanie is kept caged up with a bunch of other kids because they are flesh eaters. This is happens after some horrific event in England. This is actually quite a philosophical novel which asks questions about what makes us human…and how we react to catastrophe. I am not a zombie girl, but I really liked this book. Total page-turner.
And then I have a couple titles for young adult readers:
Monument 14 – Emmy Laybourne – an environmental disaster forces brothers Dean and Alex to hole up with the other kids on their school bus in a huge superstore.
The Knife of Never Letting Go– Patrick Ness – one of my absolute favourite series about a kid named Todd who lives in a world without women and where everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts.
Ashes– Ilsa Bick 17-year-old encounters a post environmental disaster world filled with flesh eating teens and blurred morality
These are all first books in a series, which would definitely keep your teens reading.
I wonder if part of the appeal of reading dystopian fiction doesn’t have to do with the extreme nature of the stories? I mean, did you ever imagine you’d be confined to your house or have to follow arrows when you go to the grocery store? I don’t miss shopping; I miss my friends and my family. Dystopian fiction capitalizes on the fears of the characters and the readers and encourages them to make choices that will benefit the whole community. Perhaps some really good things will come out of Covid 19.
Looking for more great reads in the dystopian category?
Vulture’s Pandemic Reading List
Oprah’s List of the Best 20 Dystopian Novels of All-Time
Happy reading.
Stay safe.
Read this book if you like a side of psycho with your roses and chocolates. This first person narrative tells the story of NYC book store manager, Joe, who falls in love with a beautiful wannabe writer, Beck. This is an interesting thriller because Joe isn’t your garden variety psycho. He’s crazy, for sure, but he’s also crazy smart. He’s instantly smitten with Beck and he finds a way to insinuate himself into her life. He wants her and he won’t let anything prevent him from having her. This is a page turner that’s actually really well-written. You can watch the series on Netflix, too. It’s a pretty true-to-the-book adaptation.
Of all the books on this list, Starry Eyes is likely the most traditional. It concerns 17-year-olds Zorie and Lennon. They’ve been in each other’s lives forever and things were just starting to heat up when it all fell apart. When the story starts, the two are barely speaking to each other. Then they end up on a hiking trip together and things between to thaw between them. As teenage love stories go, this one is well-written, with believable, imperfect characters that it’s almost impossible not the fall in love with…as they fall in love with each other.
This is an adorable book of comics all about the ways in which bibliophiles love their books. Tung is a writer/illustrator from Birmingham, England, and she has totally captured what it means to be in love with all things bookish. Never mind the candy, give your book-loving sweetheart this as a gift instead. Marie Kondo would definitely not endorse this book about buying/owning more books. That makes Ms. Kondo wrong, imho.
I love John Green and I bought this book pretty much as soon as it came out…and it’s been on my bedside table ever since. I know it’s easy to hate on John Green – but I kind of love him and he totally loves teenagers and writes them so well. Turtles all the Way Down is the story of Aza, her best friend Daisy, and Davis, the son of a missing millionaire who has disappeared. Aza is determined to find him to claim the reward.
couple years back. Little Fires is set in the late 1990s in Shaker Heights, Ohio and is a story of both a literal fire (one of the main characters watches as her house burns down in the novel’s opening pages) and figurative fires: race, rebellion, family tensions. By all accounts it is a literary page-turner. So I am looking forward to that,
This is Tallent’s debut novel and despite the tricky subject matter – sexual abuse – the reviews have been uniformly fantastic. Stephen King called it a ‘masterpiece’ if you care about that sort of thing. It’s probably helpful to know going in that this is the story of Martin, a survivalist, and his fourteen-year-old daughter, Turtle and that – from the sounds of things – there is plenty to make readers super uncomfortable, but it’s also been called “a devastating and powerful debut.” So I have to read it.
So, David Cassidy just died. My poor heart could barely stand it…but the last few years have not been kind to him. If you loved him, though, or you know someone who loved him – I highly recommend Allison Pearson’s novel 
Angie Thomas’ debut novel 
For middle grade readers, I recommend 
novel tells the story of rival gangs in Oklahoma the greasers and the socs – the socials. It’s a simple story, really, about Ponyboy Curtis and his best friend, Johnny, but something about those characters really resonates with young readers and when I recommend the book to students who haven’t read it – the reviews are unanimously favourable. S.E. Hinton said “Teenagers still feel like I felt when I wrote the book, that adults have no idea what’s really going on. And even today, that concept of the “in crowd” and the “out crowd” is universal. The names of the groups may change, but kids still see their own lives in what happens to Ponyboy and his friends.”
Hinton wasn’t a one-trick pony(boy) haha either. Her second novel That Was Then, This is Now, is actually better than The Outsiders, in my humble opinion. If students have read The Outsiders – and a lot of them do in middle school, I always suggest That Was Then as a follow-up. Most of them have never heard of it and again – they always like it. It’s about two childhood friends, Bryon and Mark, whose lives diverge when one chooses to go down a different – more dangerous – path than the other. I loved this book as a kid. Loved it. And for students who’ve loved The Outsiders, Ponyboy makes an appearance – although this novel is not a sequel.
Canadian Nick Cutter aka Craig Davidson is the author of the very disturbing novels The Deep and one I read a couple years ago called 
be hitting the shelves in May. All I can tell you about it is that it features a single mother and her daughter whose bodies are discovered at the bottom of a lake. I’m not sure that The Girl on the Train was the best of the bunch of thrillers that came out over the past couple years. If I were you, I’d add Claire Macintosh’s killer I Let You Go to my list…but since I’ve already read it, I’m looking forward to her second novel I See You.
As for YA – because you know I am always on the lookout for the next YA book I can gush about to my students…I am going to cheat a little and suggest you add a book to your reading list that I have already read. That book is Jennifer Niven’s novel 
Cammie McGovern. It’s the story of what happens after super smart Emily and a football player called Lucas fail to stop an attack on Belinda – a young adult with developmental delays – at a high school football game. Emily and Belinda take turns telling their story and the voices are pretty awesome. It’s a ‘message’ novel without being preachy and would certainly be a welcome novel in any classroom library.
For the young reader on your list:
For anyone who likes poetry:
Finally, plan for next year and order:
First up is Claire McIntosh’s novel 
Canadian writer and a while back I spoke about her zombie apocalypse title 
The Ludic Reader 