Book Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver (ARC)

Title: Delirium

Author: Lauren Oliver

Publisher: Harper Teen

Publishing Date: February 2011

Length: 440 pages

E-ARC: Courtesy of HaperCollins Publishers 

Genre: YA, dystopian novel, romance

5/5 ***** The deliria is spreading fast, only a few days left… and there is no cure of this addictive novel by Lauren Oliver! Delirium- consuming and just exhilarating! 

~ The Author ~

Lauren Oliver comes from a family of writers and so has always (mistakenly) believed that spending hours in front of the computer every day, mulling over the difference between “chortling” and “chuckling,” is normal. She has always been an avid reader.

She attended the University of Chicago, where she continued to be as impractical as possible by majoring in philosophy and literature. After college, she attended the MFA program at NYU and worked briefly as the world’s worst editorial assistant, and only marginally better assistant editor, at a major publishing house in New York. Her major career contributions during this time were flouting the corporate dress code at every possible turn and repeatedly breaking the printer. Before I Fall is her first published novel.

She is deeply grateful for the chance to continue writing, as she has never been particularly good at anything else.  

Author profile by Goodreads 

For further information check out http://www.laurenoliverbooks.com

~ The Novel ~

Delirium is just the first novel in a series of three. Pandemonium and Requiem will continue the story around Lena, Alex and the deliria.

~ The Story ~

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love -the deliria- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love.

Summary by Goodreads

~ The Review ~

I am tempted to extend my rating system to point out the unbelievable high status Delirium has claimed in my book collection. Even before I started reading Delirium I was nothing but excited and enthusiastic about this novel. Having the summary in mind, I expected this novel to be a rocket and it turned out to be a whole fireworks.

Lena is the girl who respects each single rule of the totalitarian system. Alex is the rebel who doesn’t respect a single one of them. Lena and Alex fall in love. And I love both of them! Although I already knew our protagonist Lena has to meet someone, somehow and fall in love with that person, I couldn’t wait for it to finally happen.

The story is told from Lena’s point of view. She shares her thoughts with us and we live with her through months of enormous changes. She is struggling between her duty of social commitment and obedience and the new discovered option of free opinion and feelings. I felt a very strong connection to Lena and could always imagine how she’s feeling. Alex is just the boy a society like Delirium’s needs to get shaken to its very foundations: wild, passionate and empathetic.

As a physical, psychical and emotional free citizen I immediately realized the cruelty and deviance of Delirium’s social model and restrictions so it was very interesting to read about Lena changing her mind, learning about new living standards, love and feelings at all.

Delirium has a large romance plot which isn’t unusual for any other YA novel. But as the story around Lena and Alex is set in a dystopian world where America is shut down and love is considered as a disease, their romance isn’t just unusual but dangerous, too. 

The romance and star-crossed lover motive are thrilling because their relationship is risky even deadly, not supposed to be, so that Lena and Alex do not only have to fight their own feelings or their families but a whole society. Their fight against society holds an enormous potential of anxiety and adventure because there couldn’t be an enemy more gigantic.  

Delirium consists of a huge portion of excellent writing style. Lauren Oliver’s writing style is vivid, throwing in a metaphor from page to page to benefit the novel's overall style in so far as they beautifully enrich the tragic of story, setting and characters, never shooting over the top, never trying to play down or aestheticise society’s cruelty. She puts the smallest and the grandest wonderful forces and objects together and matches them into something infinitely poetic and beautiful.

Furthermore she applies many references and adjustments to our society. I’d love to mention all my favourite quotes, but I would only end up reciting half of the novel. The most hilarious and best satiric adaptation: the 4th of July, our day of opening and independence is their day of isolation.

At the beginning of each chapter Lauren Oliver quotes important moral guidelines of Delirium’s society and so gives the novel authenticity.

This dystopian novel shows the result of a paralyzed society which blurs into a mass of standardized shadows and the need for opposing forces. There are only a few shining lights left, trying to save the world as we know it from loosing its heart, its feelings, its humanity.

Delirium is a novel of great feelings in a world in which feelings are forbidden! Start reading Delirium immediately and dive into an outrageous dystopian world, a captivating forbidden romance and into meaningful discourses of humanity and society!

~ We love this book because… ~

1) there must be a chance for love

2) we fall in love with men reciting poetry and telling us fairy tales so easily

3) poetry has it's roots in freedom, but is even steadily growing branches and leaves in banishment

4) we want our very personal roof crusher who goes to the ends of the earth and back again for us

5) we want to read “Comprehensive Compilation of Dangerous Words and Ideas” out loud all day long and don't care about a possible regulator hearing

~ The Verdict ~

No words, just tears… Delirium represents the pure beauty of emotions and words of a novel in which love is considered as a disease.

~ Thanks to netgalley for their fantastic service and HarperCollins Publishers for allowing me access to the net galley of Delirium