Book Review: The Thinning by Inga Simpson

 

This book is a tense, thought-provoking next-five-minutes dystopia with an unusual hook -it's focused on the increasing ways in which we are cluttering up space with our junk in the name of universal connectivity and resource pillaging, and the impact that is having both on us as people and on our ability to see and learn about the universe around us.

The protagonist, Finley, is the daughter of an astronomer and an astrophotographer, based at Sliding Springs observatory at the edge of the Warrumbungles National Park in NSW, Australia (a real facility doing very similar work to that described in the book, although I suspect its actual administrative arrangements are quite different). The narrative does a bit of back-skipping to explain the scope of the dystopian moment and how it came to be, but it's mostly a quest story with an endpoint that I thought was telegraphed pretty clearly, although I was surprised to see other readers saying it came as a shock to them.

The book is very strong, excellent in fact, in this A plot - the dark sky pollution and the quest to address it. I loved all the astronomical and observational elements, and especially enjoyed the incorporation of First Nations astronomy into the story. Fin and her mother, Dianella, were both really good, complex characters, and the supporting cast did their narrative job perfectly well.

That said, I think two things let it down from being an iconic / outstanding work of fiction. One was the pervasive sense that I was reading a YA novel not labelled as such. This is not to disrespect YA fiction, which can be excellent and a lot of which I love, but more to suggest that I think Simpson was reaching for a maturity that she did not ultimately achieve in this book. The moral conundrums were too black and white, the tone too histrionic, the incorporation of super special powers too disjunctive (and annoying in a plot otherwise science-focused), and the main character ultimately too young / unformed to carry the plot to a fully formed resolution.

The second thing that I thought didn't quite land was the B plot regarding the "Incompletes" and the related forced reproduction duties assigned to young women. The fertility part started well - very ominous, and very plausibly creeping up on horror - but was ultimately undermined by the putative motive, being the birth of mutated humans with special abilities but also the inability to breed among themselves (although they can breed with "normals", hence the harnessing of young women's fertility). 

I found the whole Incompletes arc to be both badly undercooked and also just an unnecessary distraction from the much stronger A plot (the Incomplete child, Terry, was far and away the most pointless character in the whole novel). It was like Simpson felt she had to add in more obviously body-horrific bits to persuade us that this warrants the dystopian label, but I genuinely think it would have been a stronger book without it, keeping the focus on building out the really intriguing A plot further (especially as the B plot was so clearly derivative of other works that have done these themes more justice).

Overall, a worthwhile and engaging read, and I enjoyed it, but this won't be making a Top Ten list for me this year! 7/10 overall.