Not Quite a "Match" Made in Heaven

Well, at least it's not Twilight .. or The Hunger Games.  Matched by Ally Condie is more in line with Lois Lowry's The Giver than the paranormal/action adventure set of stories in that society is a pretty tight ship run by the government and the characters are given a job based on their own personal skills at a young-ish age.  Matched is also a romance; well, a romance triangle, really.  Surprise surprise.  Or not.

Our heroine in this case is Cassia (oddly reminiscent of tough heroines as Katsa and Katniss, just with a 'C' instead of a 'K,' odd, no?) and she is matched to someone who, to the reader, should be a surprise.  At first she seems happy enough to know that she already knows her match for life, her future husband.  Except then another face pops up on her view screen for a moment.  Another person she knows, but someone who society is much less fond of, someone who should not even be in the system as anybody's potential match.  The plot thickens, one would think, especially when her parents' match is, to some extent, thrown into question.  'If their match isn't perfect, then what are the chances mine will be?' Cassia asks when she finds out her mother and father do not share a perfect life like she once thought (162).

The Society takes care of the people giving them all they could want or need, except the people aren't allowed anything creative (music, poetry, art, etc.) as all of those things were banned years before Cassia starts her story.  Part of the Society's tight reign on people seems to be explained when Cassia tells the reader 'Our information intake is much more specific ... Specialization keeps people from becoming overwhelmed' (31).  This also seems to explain why people deemed matchable have their future spouse picked for them instead of simply falling in love and deciding for themselves or how the Society basically tells people when they will die.  One such example of the latter takes place when Cassia's world into further turmoil as her grandfather hands her a sheet of paper (an illegal sheet of paper, never mind the even more illegal words the sheet contains) at the end of his Society mandated lifespan of 80 years.  Suddenly Cassia and her little love triangle start to unravel as she wonders who really was meant to be her match and why art is so forbidden.  These questions are never sufficiently answered, though there is a passage late in the book that comes close.  But then, answering all the questions means there would not be a second book on the way.

Overall, the book was decent.  The writing was a bit slowly paced for some people I've spoken with, and for others it was just fine.  The romance elements are functional enough and the characters have enough depth to not be totally run of the mill types, but even so, they tend to fit the role they are cast.  Cassia is the conflicted main character, Ky the ruggedly handsome outsider with a mysterious past, and Xander is the sweet boy next door type who does not really buy into changing the world too much.  The lesser characters are intriguing, in particular Cassia's parents and grandfather who seem to share more than their share of secrets. The limit of first person story telling is that, of course, when one wants more information on certain people, unless they are present or being thought about, the reader gets shut out.  The real story seems to really start in the last quarter of the book when we learn more about Ky and why he is the way he is, not to mention the decisions Cassia is almost forced to make by that point.  As Cassia tells the reader about the poem her grandfather gives her, 'There's a reason they didn't keep this poem.  This poem tells you to fight,' (98).  I just wish the book, like the poem, had a bit more fight at times.

I would have liked for the story to be less like The Giver in some aspects and more original in others.  At times I felt like I was reading a classic Dystopian story, but a lesser version of Bradbury or Huxley.  While Matched certainly has lots of potential (and had a lot of hype), I did not feel like it lived up to my already high expectations once I finally got my hands on the book.  I hope the next book, Crossed (out Fall 2011), will continue with the writing of the latter half of the first book and pick up the pace.

Read at Your Own Risk, I guess.  For fans of dystopian romances, though I'm not sure I'm finding any direct connections to a specific book from recent years.

Work Cited.

Condie, Ally.  Matched.  New York: Dutton Books, 2010.