Feed

From Barnes & Noble

Finalist for the 2002 National Book Award, Young People's Literature
Honor book for the 2003 Boston Globe/Horn Book Award (Fiction category)

The Barnes & Noble Review
Brave New World takes a romantic teen twist in this disarming, engrossing novel set in a hyper-computerized future.

Spending time partying on the moon and riding around in his "upcar," Titus is an average teen of the future, complete with a computer chip implant -- the "Feed" -- that lets corporate marketers and government agencies broadcast directly into his brain. Then Titus meets Violet, and an anti-Feed hacker shuts down their Feeds for a short time; but when Violet's Feed is seriously damaged, she begins spouting some radical ideas.

M. T. Anderson has predicted the future, and it's startling indeed. Although Titus is a good, well-meaning kid, his blissful ignorance of the control over him leaves readers thinking twice about the destiny of earth's citizens. Beneath the book's techno-veneer, however, lies a romantic tale between a boy who gives into the system and a girl who sees beyond it. All told, Feed is a "meg" remarkable work of science fiction, and once readers begin, they'll be caught up in its powerful grip. Matt Warner

Publishers Weekly

In this chilling novel, Anderson imagines a society dominated by the feed-a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. In a starred review, PW called this a "thought-provoking and scathing indictment of corporate-and media-dominated culture." Ages 14-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

To quote from the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, November 2002: It's spring break, and Titus and his teenage friends are partying on the moon when he spots a beautiful girl. He and Violet are just getting to know each other when a hacker causes their feeds to malfunction—the chips in their brains that barrage them with ads and direct their thoughts and dreams. Titus recovers, but Violet's feed is damaged; she hasn't always had a feed, and she openly questions the poisoning of the planet, why everyone is developing lesions, and the way in which the feed insidiously feeds off them. This is a new way of looking at the world for Titus, who has never before questioned his technologically enhanced way of life, hanging out with his shallow, trendy friends. Violet and Titus enter into a relationship, each trying to understand the other, even as Violet starts to decline and die as her feed stops working. This provocative SF take on the excesses of our consumer society has echoes of A Clockwork Orange, as Anderson (author of the YA novels Thirsty and Burger Wuss) creates his own vocabulary ("It was brag," for example, meaning "great"; there are some old-fashioned expletives here as well). The invented words are not hard to understand, though, and the flashes of humor as well as the cleverly imagined grim future world should quickly draw readers into this look at teenage love and loss, and at consumerism carried to its logical extreme. (An ALA Best Book for YAs.) KLIATT Codes: S*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students. 2002, Candlewick Press, 299p., Ages 15 to 18.
—Paula Rohrlick

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-Taking a nap on the way to the moon for spring break might be boring, so Titus does his best to stay alert and have fun with his friends. The "feed" in his brain is continuously spewing advertisements, music, game shows, hairstyle alerts and many other necessary bits of information. Hundreds of years ago, people actually had to use their eyes and fingers to get information by computer, but now, in M.T. Anderson's future world (Candlewick, 2002), the computer chips are built right in, and bombard everyone with exactly what the corporate world wants them to know. In the midst of this overwhelming flow of information, Titus becomes friends with Violet, a girl who cares about what's happening in the world, is not afraid to question things, and is opposed to the "feed." What will happen when their feeds are damaged and they decide to go against the feed? Anderson's book is written to be read aloud. Titus's stream of words and the rhythm of the "teenspeak" are read to perfection by actor David Baker. The intermittent feed commercials give listeners a taste of this society and help them understand the media attack the teens here are forced to endure. Baker's presentation will make this satiric cautionary tale very real for listeners.-Lynn Evarts, Sauk Prairie High School, Prairie du Sac, WI Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

"I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before than, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe." Titus and his friends have grown up on the feed-connected on a 24-hour basis through brain implants to a vast computer network, they have become their medium. "The braggest thing about the feed . . . is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are." Titus is a master at navigating this world where to consume is to live, but when he meets Violet, a distinctly unusual girl whose philology-professor father has chosen to homeschool her instead of sending her to School(tm), he begins, very tentatively and imperfectly, to question this equation. Thrown together when their feeds are hacked at a party and they are temporarily disconnected, their very hesitant romance is played out against the backdrop of an utterly hedonistic world of trend and acquisition, a world only momentarily disturbed by the news reports of environmental waste and a global alliance of have-not nations against the obliviously consuming US. Anderson (Handel, Who Knew What He Liked, 2001, etc.) has crafted a wickedly clever narrative in which Titus's voice takes on perfectly the speech patterns of today's more vapid teens (" 'Oh, unit,' I was like, 'is this malfunction?' "). When Violet's feed begins to fail, and with it all her life functions, she decides to rebel against all that the feed stands for-the degradation of language, the self-absorption, the leaching ofall culture and independent thought from the world-and Titus must make his choice. The crystalline realization of this wildly dystopic future carries in it obvious and enormous implications for today's readers-satire at its finest. (Fiction. YA)