Photo Credits: Delyth Williams
Edited by Vaishali
Title: ‘Shatter Me’
Author: Tahereh Mafi Series: (Shatter Me #1) Publisher: Harper Collins Year of Publication: 2011 Format: Paperback ISBN: 978-0-06-208550-4 Genre/s: YA Dystopian, Fantasy, Science-fiction, Romance, Apocalypse/Post-apocalypse, Paranormal R E V I E W
A world that knows her for a monster All she desires is to be human I have never before read a book with such a beautifully scripted narrative, and prose which encapsulates rich, poetic and enthralling language in a dreary dystopian setting – The lexis itself symbolises the light in a dark world and the innocence of a yet to blossom young woman in a dictatorial domain with a tyrannical government who wants nothing more than to use her as a tool for torture. This book is incredibly unique in not just it's structure but in its exploration of a 17-year-old girl who has known nothing but abuse, neglect, isolation and loneliness, a girl who has been incarcerated for 264 days in an asylum and left to perish as one of societies outcasts.
Time itself has become an obscure concept for Juliette. She has never been allowed a voice. She documents her thoughts, her memories, her internal monologue through a secret journal she keeps stashed in her cell – her only outlet. Juliette Ferrars has a curse: she quite literally has the power to kill with a single touch, labelled as lethal and dangerous for a curse she was fated to have and a gift which cost her her freedom.
“I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through sentences”
The world has fallen into entropy, nature is dying, the weather is tempestuous, animals are almost non-existent and vegetation cannot be sustained. The world has been turned into an industrial ground and people are treated as commodities, selected and prized for their strengths and the weak are either forgotten, eradicated or sent into asylums.
“Animals were so desperate for food they were willing to eat anything and people were so desperate for food they were willing to eat poisoned animals. We were killing ourselves by trying to stay alive. The weather, the plants, the animals, and our human survival are all inextricably linked. The natural elements were at war with one another because we abused our ecosystems. Abused our atmosphere. Abused our animals. Abused our fellow man”
The strike throughs in the text are symbolic of Juliette’s internal conflict, what she desires to say but doesn’t verses what she does, thoughts which are mostly born from deep insecurity from years of conditioning. She is lost, confused and copes the only way she knows how: counting, counting everything in her cell from the individual hairs on her head to the single threads in her blanket. She relies on coping mechanisms, mechanical behaviours to carry her through her emotional torment.
Juliette’s journey is one of internal turbulence, redemption, hope, love, strength, crippling fear and a sliver of hope despite that fear – especially when along comes Adam Kent, a saviour or a torment, a boy that the catacombs of her memory remembers. Adam was her first love, one of the only people who fought for Juliette and saw her as an equal. Adam now works for the Re-establishment – an international government regime intent on the destruction of culture, language, human rights and identity.
The world has been stripped and reconstructed into a different system of organisation, controlled and moulded to meet the needs of the Re-establishment. The Re-establishment used fear as a tool to gain the trust and devotion of the people in a dying world, they promised to fix what humans were destroying only to trap society in a huge prison system whereby the world is divided into sectors that are led by the leader of that sector. They made a promise to save only to corrupt. Juliette feels betrayed by Adam but soon learns the truth, and he offers her a choice for everything she has ever dreamed of. Juliette fights for the first time in her life with the help of Adam and together they outrun the forces intent on capturing them for treason.
“Hope is hugging me, holding me in its arms, wiping away my tears and telling me that today and tomorrow and two days from now I will be just fine and I’m so delirious I actually dare to believe it”.
Whilst Juliette is in the asylum, Juliette is visited by the Commander and Regent of sector 45: Enter Warner – a tall, golden haired, green eyed soldier; pristine and deadly. He makes Juliette a proposition to give her freedom and luxury, amongst ideals that seem a dream away, in exchange for using her as a scourge to torment his enemies. Juliette must join the very side that put her in this position to begin with, the side that is incinerating the world she used to know.
Warner is instantly an interesting character to meet; his sociopathic tendencies and conflicting attitudes make for an intoxicating blend of attractive antagonist. He is complex, multi-faceted and intrigued me just as much as Juliette. I found myself eager for every Warner scene! Juliette is incredibly conflicted by his contradictory behaviours, does he truly care for her or is he manipulating her? Warner claims to be helping her; that they are more similar than she would care to admit, and though Juliette does not know who she can trust, she does know that Adam is her only hope for all she has ever wanted. With no mercy, no compassion, and no sense of magnanimity, Warner has other plans.
“Life is a bleak place, sometimes you have to learn how to shoot first”
Juliette is a refreshing young protagonist who (in my opinion) rivals even the best of them throughout fiction with her dreams of defiance and her desire for change and acceptance despite the odds and in favour of them. She is a soft heart in a harsh world (people in my opinion that should be prized). She learns and finds the will to fight even in a world that has rejected her, that has become foreign to her and has transitioned drastically in her absence. Juliette is inspiring in just how much compassion and heart she possesses irrespective of her drowning spirit and despite her history. She wants the very thing that makes her human, though the universe mocks her, taunts her, and denies her of it: to be touched.
“All I ever wanted to do was reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart”.
Juliette struggles with not just her identity but with her strange ability and soon comes to understand that her gift is much more cataclysmic than she once thought. When you are treated like nothing more than a monster, what else will you believe but that very notion? Juliette has to constantly convince herself of her own sanity which indicates just how broken she is when we first meet her. All she wants is love and approval and has done nothing but fight to prove her own innocence for her entire existence, praying for her own absolution. She became a victim and that word has never escaped her, her very world is centralised around it.
This book shattered me and continues to every time I read it. I think it poses a wonderful premise for young readers. Juliette’s character is one of the most relatable on a very human level – I think we can all see ourselves in her, and I know I certainly did. I have such an emotional attachment to this book series and these characters; I can never forget the moment I picked up this book, read it and realised i was holding something of a gamechanger in my flimsy grip. I knew from the very first line that I found something extraordinary and it was. Juliette instantly piqued my interest, she held me captivated by her every word as did Warner and Adam. I cannot praise this book enough and would recommend it to everybody!
This book is character driven definitely, and though I would have preferred more world building as I had questions that were not answered about the why’s and how’s of the world, characters make a story for me and I could have stayed in this world for the characters alone. This is my go-to book and it's one that I always revisit just because I can never forget how I felt, my experience with reading it and the characters that i know for a fact will stay with me forever, and am slightly (majorly) in love with. This story brings forth the significance of touch and human contact, how important touch is to feel connected to another human being and the neglect that comes with the inability to have such a right can. Tahereh Mafi explores what it means to feel for the first time.
'Shatter Me' is a genuine, clarifying, brilliant, heartfelt, hopeful read about a lost girl finding her way and finding herself. I would recommend it to everybody and anybody who loves to read. As a reader I find that reading is an incredibly visceral experience for me and never have I felt more connected and associated to a fictional character than I have when I first met Juliette and her anxiously furnished mind. Just like the dulcet, sweet-sounding, lilting harmony that is the narrative, S H A T T E R M E I S P O E T R Y I N M O T I O N.
“The sun is an arrogant thing, always leaving the world behind when it tires of us. The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Everyday it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections”.
Rebellion will always break out in an oppressed society and insurgence is rising…
I gave this book 5 stars -
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M Y R A T I N G S Y S T E M: ★ - 1 star: I did not like the book ★★ - 2 stars: The book was okay ★★★ - 3 stars: It was a good, solid read ★★★★ - 4 stars: A great book ★★★★★ - 5: A phenomenal read _______________________________________
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A D D I T I O N A L M E N T I O N S >> 1) I really love the bird symbolism 2) Kenji is just amazing
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R E L A T E D P O S T S: ● BOOK REVIEW:'Unravel Me' by Tahereh Mafi ● BOOK REVIEW:'Ignite Me' by Tahereh Mafi ● BOOK REVIEW 'Unite Me' by Tahereh Mafi _______________________________________________ L E A V E A C O M M E N T A N D L E T' S T A L K A B O U T
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February 2024
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