Celestine North is a beautiful, intelligent teenage girl who lives in what should be a perfect world. It’s the not-too-distant future and, in this unnamed European country, anyone deemed to have transgressed the social rules is branded – literally – as Flawed.
These people haven’t done anything illegal, but they have shown themselves to be morally flawed: by lying, by making bad decisions, by “stepping out of line with society”. Those judged to be Flawed aren’t sent away, but their lives are carefully limited and controlled, right down to the food they’re allowed to eat. As Celestine says, they must live in a society where “everything they want [is] just out of reach”.
The roots of this dystopian world will sound all too familiar to Irish readers.
“Banks folded, the government collapsed, the economy was ravaged, unemployment and emigration soared. People were blindsided by what happened, and the leaders were blamed . . . It was their bad judgment, their bad decisions that led to the country’s collapse. They were evil; they had destroyed families and homes, and they were to suffer. They were the morally flawed people who had brought about our downfall.”
In this future, there are no lavish pensions or lucrative speaking gigs for fallen leaders. “Anybody who had made mistakes in the past couldn’t take leadership roles in the future . . . it was decided that any person who made any error in judgment would be rooted out of society entirely.”
Celestine has never had a problem with this – after all, she’s perfect. She is even going out with Art, whose father, Judge Bosco Crevan, is the head of the guild that runs the Flawed system. Then, one day sirens wail on Celestine’s street and a neighbour, Angelina Tinder, is seized by the guild’s whistleblowers. Celestine is stunned and horrified to discover that someone she’s known all her life is Flawed.
A few days later, Celestine tries to help an elderly Flawed man who has a coughing fit on the bus. It’s a decision that will send her life in an unexpected direction.
Celestine is a refreshing protagonist. For one, she happens to be mixed-race, which shouldn't be a big deal but which, in a world where young people of colour are shamefully under-represented in fiction, is important. And unlike some dystopian heroines, she is not a natural rebel or warrior. Like Jessika Keller, the teenage protagonist of Julie Mayhew's superb dystopian novel The Big Lie, Celestine is a "good girl". Academic, beautiful and just popular enough, she's always wanted to follow the rules, to avoid standing out.
It’s only when the actions of the authoritarian regime affect someone she knows for the first time that she starts to question the system at all. Even then, her immediate reaction to Angelina’s capture is to feel disgust that she had touched the same piano as a Flawed person.
Even when she does step in to save the old man, it is partly out of kindness but also because what’s happening simply isn’t logical - it doesn’t fit in with her mathematical, direct view of the world. “I like solutions,” Celestine says. “The problem was disturbing me and fixing it just made sense.”
This approach makes Celestine feel more real and relatable (most people aren’t rebels who fight the system) and adds to the book’s tension. We genuinely don’t know what Celestine will do next.
In fact, it’s hard to write about Cecelia Ahern’s new novel – her first aimed at young adults – without giving too much away, because the story constantly twists in unexpected ways. We know from the start that Celestine’s decision will have serious consequences, but it’s not always obvious what they will be.
And, though the prose can be a little flat and the dialogue slightly stilted, Ahern is a brilliant storyteller. There’s no hanging around waiting for the action to begin. Ahern throws the reader right in, swiftly and deftly setting the scene and putting the story in motion. The result is a book that grabs from the opening pages and refuses to let go, helped by short, punchy chapters and skilful pacing.
Ahern is, of course, best known for romantic novels that have made her a bestseller all over the world. This isn't her first published work of speculative fiction (she contributed to a 2015 collection of Doctor Who short stories). and she clearly understands what makes an effective dystopian setting. There are only a few scenes of violence in Flawed, but they are extraordinarily vivid and effective without being gratuitous.
The book ends on a cliffhanger, and while there are signs that Celestine’s adventures might take a familiar “rebels against baddies” turn, let’s hope Ahern keeps things as sharp and fresh as she has done in this gripping novel.
Anna Carey's latest novel is Rebecca Is Always Right
