By Jordan Sunkel
Round Table editor
“For males twenty-five is the fatal age. For women it’s twenty. We are all dropping like flies.”
Seventy years before Rhine was born, scientists created perfect children. Cancers were eliminated along with other serious diseases. Life seemed perfect.
At least it was, until the “first generation” started having children of their own, and the virus killed every male child at 25 and every female child at 20. Ever since the discovery of the virus, the world has been in a panic to find the anecdote.
The poor live in ruins, and the rich have Gatherers kidnap young women to be brides for the young rich men to continue the human race. Every day hundreds of girls disappear, to be found dead along the roads, used as prostitutes, or never heard from again.
16-year-old Rhine lives with her twin brother, Rowan, in a run-down apartment in Manhattan. Their parents, first generation geneticists, were killed in a bombing while trying to find the anecdote.
While trying to find a job, she gets kidnapped by the Gatherers, and sold to a rich doctor for her heterochromatic eyes, one blue and one brown. A few days after she arrives at the mansion, she is married to Linden, along with her two other sister wives, Cecily and Jenna.
The longer Rhine stays at Linden’s home, the more her spirit degrades, until she starts a real relationship with Jenna and her attendant, Gabriel. But the more she lies to become Linden’s “first wife,” the more she starts forgetting about the real world around her. She must get away, before it’s too late.
Wither, the first book in the “Chemical Garden” Trilogy, by Lauren DeStefano is a tragically haunting vision of the future. She writes a world of fear, disgust, pain and loss through Rhine’s point of view.
DeStefano writes her characters so well that you either love them or hate them. The reader wants to be Rhine’s best friend and help her through her troubles, while they also want to hate Housemaster Vaughn for the things he does behind the girls’ backs.
Wither is a blatant attack on genetically modified organisms, while producing an extremely convincing outlook on the future. The prospect of such a future looming in front of the world is a scary possibility.
Rhine’s world is one that I hope our world will never have to experience. Only living to 20 as a woman is hard to even imagine, especially since I would only have 2 years left.
An important underlying message DeStefano writes is to enjoy every moment, whether it be big or small. With only a fourth of a normal lifespan, there’s no room to wander through life without noticing the small things.
The future is both far off, and here-and-now. The possibility of Rhine’s world becoming our own is a very real risk. So never forget to “stop and smell the roses,” because you never know when it might be your last opportunity.
