The Insanity of 'Delirium'!

By: Khevna J.

Delirium, written by Lauren Oliver, is a book that will make your heart turn upside down, will confuse your brain, and will leave you wanting more! It is a young adult romance novel that is set in a dystopian society. In this society, love is seen as a disease, and whoever attracts it is considered to be contaminated or infected. There are regulators who roam the city streets during the day, checking for signs of contamination and thus, the spread of the deliria. Those who are infected are known as sympathizers. Sympathizers who live in the Wilds, an unregulated forest area, are known as Invalids. At the age of eighteen, the cure is administered through “the procedure”. If the cure is administered on anyone who is younger than eighteen, there could be dangerous side effects. A seventeen-year old girl named Lena Haloway falls in love before the age of eighteen, and the first part of her tale is told in Delirium, the first of three installments in the Delirium trilogy.

 

This book was expertly written, and I loved it in every angle. The plot was attention-grabbing, and in a way, new. The dystopian plot of a society fraught with the absence of love is a unique idea that few people could think of. Love is a concept that cannot be explained in words, and is something that must be inevitably present in every civilization to truly complete it. Oliver skillfully explained this to her readers through descriptive imagery and vivid word choice that brought me right to the action, especially since the book was written in the first-person point of view. This point of view made me feel closer to the narrator, and I was thus able to experience all of Lena’s feelings and obstacles with her.

        The reader should seek out this book to read for herself because the main moral to be extracted from this story can only be emphasized and learned by reading the book; reading the book will allow the reader to experience Lena’s difficulties, understand her feelings about love, comprehend her feelings about two different societies, and empathize with her. By reading the story, the reader will be taken through a series of twists and turns, through descriptive imagery, through various paces, both slow and quick, and will end up feeling and knowing significantly more than they would have if another person had just recited to them the plot of the story.

        This book, and the remaining two installments of the trilogy, Pandemonium and Requiem, can be found in any library, can be ordered online, and can be read on an electronic device.