What a disturbing book. It portrays teens in a future where consumerism run amok has destroyed the planet and all human decency. Computers have been implanted into people's bodies so that they can have a continuous feed of news, gossip, product information, advertising, and generally distracting trivia. A kid meets a girl who is different; she wants to be normal, but she also wants poetry and nature and life, all of which are incompatible with people's one and only purpose: consuming. Soon you realize that the constant attention to things and gossip has not only brought out the worst in teens, they are merely acting on the decisions adults have made. Among the creepy things - meat is raised artificially, great giant, dripping walls of it. School (TM) has been privatized and is pretty much where we're headed only worse..People are getting lesions because of the toxicity of their world. These become fashionable, though clearly people are falling apart, quite literally. Any solution that isn't profitable is out of the question, though it seems there will soon be a world revolt against the United States,which has brought on environmental collapse. Perhaps the most disturbing thing of all is that people are mostly passive - and the shallowness is really scary. Stunningly inventive, brutal, and thought-provoking. Not a good cure for insomnia. Whew, what a horrifying story - and amazing that it was written before Facebook launched. This pairs interestingly with Dave Egger's The Circle, which depicts a future that's about ten minutes from now.