OSAFS: First Impression

http://tinyurl.com/z935mgs

Well, I've certainly never read anything like this before.

Chang-Rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea takes a different take on dystopia and society, one that relies on the here & now in order to construct the there & then. In the span of who knows how many years, Baltimore becomes B-Mor, citizens of the past become B-Mor's so-called 'natives,' and technology advances exponentially. But what about the people? 

The most distinct aspect of OSAFS, in my opinion, is Lee's use of the first person plural to narrate the story. I had never before encountered the use of "we/us" to tell a tale, and it definitely changes the game. With frequent uses of phrases like "Of course" and sentences like "Indeed, it's difficult for us to understand...," it's hard to decide whether or not the readers can trust the narrator(s) (20). Stories told in the first person can very rarely avoid bias or exaggerative flair. 

The collective voice reminds me in some ways of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and the novel's society's caste system which utilized social conditioning to force everyone into having the same opinions and interests. The same narrative. It's possible that something similar is occurring in Lee's novel; perhaps when Baltimore transformed into a high-tech, high-functioning community, and all the kids began learning the same - probably embellished - history, their voices came together and produced the "we/us."