Unwind

UNWIND is a dystopian future where abortion is outlawed but teenagers can be "unwound", a state which is distinct from death in ways that are legalistic, technical, and horrifying.

I liked and I'm looking forward to how the sequels (hopefully) develop and complicate the world. UNWIND has a specific and pretty interesting plot, but narratively it does the heavy lifting of a kind of tour, showing all the different facets of existence for someone impacted by the unwinding, the ways that this deeply flawed plan has cracked and broken the people under it. The main characters are slated to be unwound, some willingly and some not, but the mix of perspectives combine to show just how fucked up the whole system is. Secondary characters get a few chapters and even minor characters might get one to show how everything in their world is bent by this paradigm. 

In a book meant for teens, it's especially poignant that since Unwinds are always children the majority of recipients of their organs will be adults. This sets up a paradigm where the old are preying on the young in a visceral way. Page counts are lower in YA, and part of what makes this world so immersive are the little things. Even something as simple as recipients continually referring to the donated organs and body parts as if they don't belong to them, they belong to the person who was unwound, it creates this sense of disassociation. There's a character who received a lung and consistently draws a distinction between himself and this lung that's in his body but isn't his, it belongs to some other kid who was unwound. This distinction is one of horde of tiny details in how everyone is committed to the idea that the unwound are that, unwound, a state that is somehow distinct from state-sanctioned murder plus organ donation on the basis that a bunch of people said so and everyone plays along. 

Came across this YA book on a list of dystopian fiction and gave it a listen on Audible. Dystopian it is indeed. Some unspecified time in the future, the pro-life and pro-choice factions in the US reached a crisis:
"On one side, people were murdering abortion doctors to protect the right to life, while on the other side people were getting pregnant just to sell their fetal tissue. And everyone was selecting their leaders not by their ability to lead, but by where they stood on this single issue."

A new breakthrough in "neurografting" which allows every single part of a donor's body to be put to use leads to the "Bill of Life" being proposed. There are no more abortions. But a child unwanted by the mother can be "storked" - left on a stranger's doorstep, and that person becomes legally responsible for taking the child in and raising them. At age 13, but before age 18, however, if the child is still unwanted and showing no signs of becoming a valuable adult, the child's parents or legal guardians can decide the child is to become an "unwind". The child is sent to an unwinding center, where they are essentially held in waiting until enough recipients are needed for all their donated organs/pieces. Then the child is -- not killed, because every single part of them remains alive -- unwound. The child ceases to be an individual person and is instead spread between multiple recipients.

Because no part of the child dies, both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice factions were able to agree on this solution, and the only people who don't benefit are the children themselves, those who were unwanted, or who got in trouble, or became known as troublemakers, or who were otherwise caught in circumstances beyond their control and are destined to be unwinds. If the kids can escape and survive until 18 they will be untouchable after that, but that's hard to achieve in a world where medical research on cures has almost halted because transplantation can solve almost every disease and now there's a near unlimited supply of healthy young tissue. The book, of course, follows some of these unfortunate children trying to escape the fate of unwinding. It also embraces the idea that parts of a donor's memory/personality can be transferred with body tissue; for example a trucker that one of our runaways meets demonstrates a talent for card tricks which he says is entirely due to his transplanted hand. There's mixed data on this scientifically speaking, and the author takes it to a somewhat hard to believe extreme, but interestingly done anyway.

Overall a very unique look at a problem that does seem fairly insoluble at present, and very grim commentary on the cruelty of human attitudes and politics. There appear to be some sequels which I haven't investigated yet, but this ends with a satisfying conclusion, no cliffhanger.