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Suicide Club
- Author
- Rachel Heng
- Narrator
- Gwendoline Yeo
- Publisher
- Hodder & Stoughton
- Publish Date
- 10 July 2018
- Run Time
- 9 hours 42 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Always look both ways before you cross the road. Get a 9 to 5 job . Exercise for 30 minutes every day. Do not eat bread. Do not eat sugar. Do yoga. Do meditate. Never raise your voice. Always smile, even if you feel like dying.
What are you doing to help yourself?
What are you doing to show that you're worth the resources?
Some time in the near future, thanks to medical technology HealthTechTM, immortality is now within humanity's grasp. But faced with declining economic productivity, falling birth rates and a severely aging population, the Ministry has become the all-powerful arbiter of how healthcare resources are allocated.
Resources accrue to 'lifers', those predisposed for a life expected to be lived healthily well beyond a hundred years old. Some factors that determine lifer status are genetically incidental - but there are other, more intangible factors that are within individuals' control: the degree to which they are 'life-loving' and self-caring. Non-lifers are known as 'sub-100s': individuals with no potential for longevity and deemed a waste of HealthTechTM resources.
The Suicide Club hasn't always been an activist group. Initially, it was a group of disillusioned lifers, gathering to indulge in forbidden, hedonistic activities: performances of live music, traditional meals of the most artery-clogging kind, irresponsible orgies . . . You name it. Now branded terrorists, anyone found guilty of wanting the right to die as they choose will find themselves fast-tracked to the Third Wave and condemned to immortality. . .
(P)2018 Macmillan Audio
Critics Review
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Life-affirming . . . "Be careful what you wish for" has never been so chilling, or so gripping
Erin Kelly, author of HE SAID/SHE SAID
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We raced through this addictive take on the modern obsession with youth and perfection
Fabulous Magazine, Sun
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Original and subversive
Independent
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An intriguing idea in which Heng takes a much-needed swipe at health fascism and our obsession with youth, beauty and superfoods
Mail on Sunday
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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A complicated and promising debut that spoofs the current health culture craze even as it anticipates its appalling culmination.
Kirkus
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Rachel Heng's highly readable debut novel is thought-provoking, moving, worryingly convincing - and ultimately hopeful
Irish Times
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A provocative new author. A fascinating debut novel. Read it!
Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy
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Clever, bold and makes you think about the value of life
Good Housekeeping
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Suicide Club bends genre with grace and artistry, delivering us to the outermost reaches of what's familiar and affirming what dares to still exist there: family, friendship, and forgiveness. With superb writing, Rachel Heng has crafted a world inside of a world gone mad, one where love faces its most difficult test. This is an exciting, bold, inventive novel.
Kristen Iskandrian, author of MOTHEREST
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The future is here. Let's welcome one of its stars. Talented and ferociously intelligent, Heng has produced a glittering debut
Joanna Briscoe, author of YOU
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Suicide Club is a bold and brilliant book
Francesca Jakobi, author of BITTER
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Heng expertly threads a ribbon of dread through her glittering vistas and gleaming characters . . . A complicated and promising debut
Kirkus
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Glitters, darkly . . . a subversive celebration of life.
Nick Clark Windo
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I always love novels that can combine powerful writing with massive levels of compassion and heart, and SUICIDE CLUB is one such book. Its genre-straddling dark heart can't fail to impress.
James Smythe
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Fans of modern speculative fiction and readers who love stories that warn us to be careful what we wish for will be enthralled by Heng's highly imaginative debut
Library Journal
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If the styling is satirical . . . Heng isn't playing for laughs . . . the fascinating and compelling scenario on show here ultimately forces you to question nothing less than the meaning of life
Metro
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A provocative and engrossing novel, SUICIDE CLUB has plenty to say about our obsession with health fads
Stylist
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What is particularly chilling about SUICIDE CLUB is that the dystopian world it's set in - one obsessed with looks and youth - is not an entirely implausible vision of the future . . . Through crisscrossing stories about love and loss, suffused in some wonderful and heartbreaking prose, she takes the reader on a journey to truly understand the question: who wants to live forever?
The Skinny
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A feat of blazing imagination, Rachel Heng's Suicide Club is a thought-provoking look at a near-future society that feels a quarter-turn away from ours. Heng's storytelling gleams, but this novel doesn't shy away from darkness - thank goodness.
Kelly Luce, author of PULL ME UNDER
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a refreshingly original debut.
Bookriot
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Suicide Club is a rarity in the summer books season: a novel that will make you think about life and how you live it.
Medium
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Suicide Club shows us the way to live a life that might be something to be ultimately worth dying for.
Medium
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Part critique of the American cult of wellness, part glittering future with a nightmare undercurrent, Suicide Club is nothing if not deeply imaginative and timely
Kaulie, The Millions
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Gripping
Red Magazine
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Subversive and satirical, Heng has channelled all of our Insta-obsessions and turned them into a mind-blowing mystery.
Emerald Street
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Heng's vision of the future is undoubtedly big, bold and well-researched. Her expansive world-building marks her as a name to watch.
The Business Times Singapore
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Catch[es] the zeitgeist of our troubling times . . . Suicide Club is a very good story, and Heng writes like a dream about of the triumph of love and the benefit of not playing by the rules. In their search for meaning, her characters reject conformity for individuality and freedom. Perhaps our world is not so bad.
Standpoint Magazine
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Rachel Heng
- Narrator
- Gwendoline Yeo
- Duration
- 9 hours 42 minutes
- Release Date
- 10 July 2018
- ISBN
- 9781473672932
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Hodder & Stoughton
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Science fiction
Synopsis
They leave us no choice.Always look both ways before you cross the road. Get a 9 to 5 job . Exercise for 30 minutes every day. Do not eat bread. Do not eat sugar. Do yoga. Do meditate. Never raise your voice. Always smile, even if you feel like dying.What are you doing to help yourself?What are you doing to show that you're worth the resources?Some time in the near future, thanks to medical technology HealthTechTM, immortality is now within humanity's grasp. But faced with declining economic productivity, falling birth rates and a severely aging population, the Ministry has become the all-powerful arbiter of how healthcare resources are allocated. Resources accrue to 'lifers', those predisposed for a life expected to be lived healthily well beyond a hundred years old. Some factors that determine lifer status are genetically incidental - but there are other, more intangible factors that are within individuals' control: the degree to which they are 'life-loving' and self-caring. Non-lifers are known as 'sub-100s': individuals with no potential for longevity and deemed a waste of HealthTechTM resources.The Suicide Club hasn't always been an activist group. Initially, it was a group of disillusioned lifers, gathering to indulge in forbidden, hedonistic activities: performances of live music, traditional meals of the most artery-clogging kind, irresponsible orgies . . . You name it. Now branded terrorists, anyone found guilty of wanting the right to die as they choose will find themselves fast-tracked to the Third Wave and condemned to immortality. . .(P)2018 Macmillan Audio
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