Author: Caragh M. O'Brien
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Copyright: 2010
ISBN: 9781596435698
Reading Level/Interest Age: Grades 7-12
Genre: Science Fiction--Dystopia
Reader’s Annotation: When her law-abiding parents are taken by the Enclave, docile Gaia is fierce in her determination to get them out.
Plot Summary
Because Gaia lives outside the wall, she is poor. At 16 she’s already worked as her mother’s assistant for years, and soon she’ll be a full-fledged midwife herself. Gaia and her parents serve the Enclave (the wealthy society inside the wall) faithfully, which includes taking the first three babies born each month away from their mothers and turning them over for adoption inside the wall. She herself has two older brothers who were “advanced” as babies to families inside the Enclave. She thinks with envy of the opportunities for education and fine living that they’ve had there. Not until her law-abiding parents are arrested without explanation does Gaia begin to question this state of affairs. When they don’t come back, she decides that she has to go in after them. Almost as soon as she gets inside, though, Gaia is arrested—for performing a C-section on the corpse of a woman hanged for incest. Saving the baby makes Gaia something of a hero and a political liability. Handsome Captain Grey is drawn to Gaia’s bravery, too. When she is taken for interrogation he becomes her ally, helping her make a series of daring escapes in her quest to save her parents.
Critical Evaluation
Birthmarked has a level of complexity lacking in many other dystopian novels—the bad guys aren’t monsters. Yes, they take advantage of the people who live outside the wall and brutally stifle dissent, but they have reasons that go beyond being evil. The family that hides Gaia inside the wall helps her even though they don’t want revolution, just reform. Other characters are similarly well drawn. Gaia, especially, is inspiring. She starts out incredibly naïve, but soon shows that she’s committed, smart, and fierce in the pursuit of what’s right.
The plot has a good balance of conspiring and action. For the most part Gaia’s clever unraveling of mysteries and daring escapes are credible. The exception is her interrogation. Why would the supposedly brainy bad guys need uneducated Gaia to crack a negative space code? It’s too easy. There are some great surprises along the way, though, and a breathless race to a cliffhanger ending that will have teens lining up for the sequel.
Curriculum Ties: N/A
Booktalking Ideas: Describe Gaia's world--the Unlake, the water rations, the Tvaltar, the wall.
Challenge Issues: N/A
About the Author
A couple of years ago, as I drove across the country with my family from Connecticut to California, the drought in the southern states started me thinking about what’s going to happen to America when climate change really hits. I figured we’d annex Canada and all move north. It wasn’t the nicest idea, and it sparked deeper concerns about how power and politics might evolve in a crisis. Once I threw in babies, too, I had the start of Gaia’s story.
People ask me how I became a writer, and the answer’s slow and simple. Take my book-laced girlhood, and my friendship with my best pal neighbor, and my six wild, musical siblings, and my love for my husband and our goofy kids, and certain losses and fears, and my years of writing and teaching, and then put me on a couch with a computer. I try to write the best thing I can.
I wrote the first draft of Gaia’s story while on sabbatical in Tiburon, CA, and when I was stumped, I’d walk in the hills. I walked pretty much every day.
www.caraghobrien.com/book/about-caragh/
Why is this title included?
This is a solid entry in the popular dystopian genre. It's on the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults, 2011 list.