I learned about Unwind from a coworker whose son was reading it for school. Apparently there was some controversy among the parents. Having just finished Don Quixote I figured this would be great light reading to bridge the gap before vacation. While easy to read, this definitely wasn’t exactly the light reading I had expected.

Unwind is set in a dystopian future in which America has fought its second civil war. Only this time, the fighting was over abortion. The war eventually ended with the signing of the Bill of Life. According to this document all life was protected from conception to the age of 13. From 13 to 18 a parent could choose to retroactively unwind their children. Unwind follows the story of 3 children who are set to be Unwound.

Unwind is full of interesting ideas and deals with the difficult subject of abortion with subtlety. However, the writing itself is just mediocre. It is worth reading if you want to start a discussion on abortion with a teen, but probably not otherwise.

In fact, the most interesting thing for me in regards to Unwind was finding the parallels between it and Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (an essay in which Swift satirically encourages the Irish to eat their children in order to alleviate poverty). I would say more here, but I don’t want to spoil anything if you are interested in reading Unwind. Feel free to check out the last 2 paragraphs of my database entry for the details, though.

What suprised me the most, however, was that this would be picked for school reading. What do you think – is this appropriate high school reading?

Full database entry on Unwind. Beware spoilers.

P.S. I wrote this on my iPhone so please forgive any typos or weird formatting.