Word: waipori
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This is the theme that runs through the novel, a combination of poetry and narrative that culminates in a vision of a utopia in which ideals have metastasized like cancer cells. The place is Waipori City, New Zealand; the time, post-World War III-or maybe IV. In the world's blighted aftermath, conditions require such measures as the Human Delineation Act, which computerizes the population into those who are allowed to live and those who are unnecessary and must die. The latter are officially known as "animals...
Despite the safety and power of his position, Monk is slightly disturbed. He introduces into his description of the Waipori millennium the exercise books of a retarded girl named Milly Galbraith. Hers is the traditional tale told by the classic simpleton that unwittingly speaks the truth. As Milly wonders about her fate under the H.D.A., her naive narration and bad spelling redeem words from the neutrality of numbers...
...being stranded in a void, of being so alone that one's very existence is in doubt. As Miss Frame expresses it in the poetry that threads the novel: "It is the company of weather I crave in this weatherless room/the thermometer reads me only." In the Waipori of the future, the problem of establishing existence would be even more terrifying. If a plastic tree topples into the vinyl grass, does it make a sound if the forest is not electronically bugged...
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