the emergency by george packer
It's been a few weeks since I first wrote the review for this book and my browser ate it. A painful reminder to always copy and paste the text somewhere else when sketchy error messages appear, but certainly not the end of the world. That being said, I've had a hard time writing the review again. I got a review copy of this book from NetGalley quite awhile ago and sickness and being busy with work meant that I didn't get to it nearly as quickly as I'd hoped. Then disaster stroke with the browser failure, but now I'm here again and ready to write my proper review.
The Emergency by George Packer isn't an extremely long book, but it took me several weeks to ready through it. It's thematically challenging and given what's been in the news for the past year(?), the low level of anxiety that accompanied every single reading sessions quickly became overwhelming. This book was incredibly challenging. It gave me a lot of anxiety. It was also really rewarding, and I absolutely loved it. Reading this novel also served as a reminder that I really need to read some George Orwell. I think I missed out on a lot of this book because of that hole in my reading knowledge. Alas.
In essence, this book follows the collapse of an empire, aptly called "the Empire" and how several different characters process the experience and how these events effect their lives. The Empire enjoyed prosperity for a long time and the collapse comes rather suddenly, not necessarily because of one specific collect, but more because of a general apathy of the whole population. Following this quiet collapse, the Emergency, youth step forward to try to create a new world for themselves. But in the process, ethnic and class tensions rise, and us readers start to get a glimpse at the larger picture of what may be going on here through the help of several distinct parts told through different perspectives with some timeline overlap.
I can never say it enough, but I love novels (all stories really) told in multiple perspectives, and for The Emergency in particular, I'm not sure that the story survives with the impact it ends up having without it. These different views allow you to see into how different people thing about the crisis and analyze the bias of each character and yourself. Just when you think you've gotten a clearer picture, you get a whole new view and set of emotions to grapple with, and each of these gives you a different understanding of the situation.
I'm not sure I understand what the underlying message of this novel was in great detail. Like I said, I think I'm missing out on a lot because of my lack of detailed knowledge of George Orwell. What I do know, is that despite the extensive despair that this book made me feel, it also filled me with some kind of strange hope. Things are hard for the characters in the book. Societal collapse and building new social systems is hard. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking yourself better than others and ignoring your own bias when you look at their actions. But individual experience isn't the only experience. Every single person on this earth views the world through their own senses. There's certainly overlap, but nothing is universal. Maybe someday the characters of this book, and us in this world too, will live in a world where human rights aren't questioned, where class and race and ethnic division don't create convenient excuses for treating some as less than human, but that's not the world we live in right now.
I know many people, and I nervously include myself here (nervously because is anything ever enough?), actively pursue this kind world, but the truth of the matter is that you can't make someone change their mind. You can't force anyone to agree with you. People have to want to change in order to change. You can't argue someone out of being miserable and hateful. But what you can do, is give anything you have to offer. All of us have different skills and all of them are needed to move ahead. We can't all be doctors or street protesters or union leaders, but every has something to give. We can't predict the future, but we can commit ourselves to a world that is kinder and more welcoming to all people, and despite the dreariness of reading The Emergency and getting to know its eclectic cast of characters, that's the message I came away with.
Giving up/apathy is far worse than imperfect action, and often, that effort you didn't think was enough is exactly what the world needed the most.
Updated 1 month, 3 weeks ago