Review: The Postmortal

The Postmortal: A Novel
By Drew Magary
Published by Penguin/August 30, 2011
ISBN: 9780143119821
Review Copy Courtesy of NetGalley 
What's it about? Courtesy of Goodreads:  

John Farrell is about to get "The Cure."

Old age can never kill him now.

The only problem is, everything else still can . . .

Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors. Witty, eerie, and full of humanity, The Postmortal is an unforgettable thriller that envisions a pre-apocalyptic world so real that it is completely terrifying.

My Review:

Finally! There's a new dystopian novel coming out that isn't a young adult book and it's good! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good YA dystopian novel, but I need a change. Drew Magary's The Postmortal is just the change I needed too.

Magary's novel has an intriguing premise: a scientist discovered the cure for aging and now the citizens of the world are clamoring to get it any way they can, but how will this scientific development impact society, civilization, and Planet Earth?

Protagonist John Farrell is a twenty something guy afraid of dying. He obtains the cure on the black market and watches his world fall a part a few weeks later when his best friend Katy dies at her first appointment for the cure when an pro-death group blows up the doctor's makeshift office in an apartment building.

As John tries to pull himself together, he's faced with an onslaught of problems never encountered by humans before because they've never been able to bypass the aging process. Marriages are falling apart or not even happening at all. People are opting for cycle marriages that have an end date. China bans the cure and begins tattooing birth dates on all of its citizens. The planet is suffering the strain of all the added people who are no longer dying. People who opt for the cure realize dozens of years later that they are ready and want to die, but they can't without an accident or cancer ravaging their body.

John is just a normal guy who has some not so normal things happen to him throughout his elongated life. He's trying to figure out what it means to be happy, what it means to love, and what it means to live in a world where it's not so easy to die. He tries to find a place in this new world for himself and ends up being an end specialist, helping those with the cure who are ready to die to do so. The thing about John though that made him such a powerful protagonist and character in this story is that he was kind of clueless, just like we all are in life, let alone in a life where we will never grow old and die. I could relate to him and want to smack him all on the same page. His good qualities and his flaws come together to create a dynamic character that carries this story so well.

The concept of a cure for aging sparks so many thoughts and emotions in me that I was instantly drawn into this book. I liked how the cure didn't make people invincible, although they felt like it sometimes. Yet, often times newly 'cured' characters thought they could live forever. They didn't give much thought to being hit by a bus, killed in a tragic car accident, or being murdered by the Greenies, a group of terrorists out to torture those who had obtained the cure. I wish that the book took a bit more time to develop this interesting dichotomy.

Overall, Drew Magary's The Postmortal is a fascinating and suspense filled novel that will make you think and rethink what you think about your reality and the reality of the postmortal world. It's well written and the prose is lyrical, melodious even, at times, although the story does get a bit slow moving at times toward the end. It's definitely a book worth checking out, especially if you enjoy a good dystopian novel like I do. On a scale of one (I hated it!) to five (I loved it!), I give The Postmortal a four.