“Her face was streaked with blood and rain. Her hair was soaking wet. She was angry. Afraid. Confused. She was inappropriately beautiful”(168).

Ah, doomed young love.

Kevin Brooks’ Being is a dismal UK dystopian science fiction novel that for some readers probably suffers from redundancy, a bad ending, and an abundance of cool. Unfortunately, the questions that develop in the course of the novel are not adequately resolved by the book’s end, which is troubling but works as a strong nod to the novel’s thematic existentialism. Regardless, I loved it and had a difficult time recovering from it. A little medical, a little conspiracist, and a little technological, Being has shades of “Alias,” Trainspotting, Morvern Callar, Chuck Palahniuk, Run Lola Run, and Poppy Z. Brite. As apparent from the name-dropping, this novel has a specific audience although not the conventional science fiction readership. While Being is unsettling with its grime, depravation, and loneliness, it is not an alienating read. Unlike most dystopias, it comforts and confirms our feelings of being unsafe and disconnected in the postmodern world.

While the characterization is sparse, Brooks adeptly cultivates concern for his heroes, Robert and Eddi. Their relationship is atypical for teen literature yet normal for Brooks’ reality. It is loving, but not sentimental. Robert and Eddi are just two unusually messed-up young people in a world of trouble involving circuit boards, fake identities, and a man (or is he a machine?) named Ryan.

Brooks’ evocative sensory language describes old feelings in new ways and creates panic, pain, and fear. “The slice of the scalpel is quick and tight. At first I feel nothing, just the silent peeling of skin and fat, opening up like a blood red smile…then suddenly the pain cuts in. It hurts”(19).

And later:

“It had some kind of miniature connection sockets all around the edge, little gold things…filaments, dulled silver-white shining dark in the light of the eye. Intricate patterns of dots and lines, circles, and waves. Fine hairs, like slender worms, moving to the flow of something invisible”(180).

And the cover is pretty rad, too.