Review: Matched by Ally Condie
First review of the new year! Keep an eye out for an upcoming group post on The Interrobangs site for more discussion on Matched!
Matched by Ally Condie
Matched is yet another YA-hype magnet. Because of the seven-figure deal the novel netted author Allie Condie, it was almost impossible to go in without preconceptions (and I’m not generally one to avoid spoilers, anyway). I’d heard Condie read prettily-written snippets on NPR; I’d also perused reviews on GoodReads decrying it as a derivative spin on YA-dystopic classics like The Giver.
But the truth is a bit more complex than that. Its taken me a few weeks to mull over my reaction to Matched, the story of Cassia Reyes (don’t let the name fool you; she’s written white as toast), whose faith in her structured, near-future society is shaken when she discovers that her arranged marriage to her neighbor, Xander, was not as perfectly plotted as she thought. On the day following her MatchBanquet, a sort of dystopian prom where her future nuptials to Xander are announced publicly, Cassia finds that she may have been meant for someone else, another neighbor, the supposedly broodalicious loner Ky.
I was really impressed by the opening of the novel, despite my reservations. It’s in the first seventy pages or so that Condie’s prose really shines. Though stylistically sparse, her writing is surprisingly rich with sensory details. The Match Banquet was particularly well realized–you can practically feel the rough texture of the green dress she wears, and though the emotional relevance and richness flags a bit when we’re returned to her bland suburbs, Condie eventually works us up to a grandparent death scene that had me openly weeping. We’re talking poignant, emotionally accurate stuff. I was surprised, and had trouble understanding the level of haterade I’d encountered.
Then I read the rest of the novel, and began to understand.
It’s not that Matched is particularly bad–it is, in fact, not particularly anything. Though the dystopian world building here is far sounder and more seamless than the glaringly problematic world of the similar, upcoming Delirium by Lauren Oliver, they suffer from what is essentially the same problem: a chronic lack of passion.
Cassia is sweet, but bland. Her two potential matches, Xander, and Ky, are sweet, but bland, and quiet, but bland, respectively. Her parents are good people that I could hardly be roused to care about. The most compelling characters–Cassia’s grandfather, who bites it in the first hundred pages, and her younger brother, who hardly figures into the plot–aren’t quite well-drawn enough to feel real. The Society that rules Cassia’s world is never threatening enough to seem truly dangerous, and the supporting characters are essentially interchangeable. A few scant weeks after reading, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you why or how any of them belonged here.
There are hints of complexity, but these are introduced almost as an afterthought. Cassia has one friend who suffers from panic attacks, and whom her betrothed, Xander, treats with surprising sympathy. This sympathy is promising (my first thought is that there might have been a love relationship between the two), but is ultimately meaningless. There are suggestions that Xander and Ky may have shared a long history of friendly rivalry and perhaps just plain friendship–but this is insufficiently developed, too.
Rather than fleshing out these points of fascinating character conflict, Condie gives us, instead, a repetitive and plodding story. Cassia and Ky climb a mountain over and over again and exchange bland poetry and something akin to boring indie comics. They share chaste kisses and hold hands. Their affair has none of the heat of genuine teen love, or even the unfulfilled promise and pain that we got in, say, Twilight. This isn’t just passion put off for later. It’s a relationship that might as well be between asexuals.
Condie’s writing holds more potential than many YA writers who write books I didn’t care about: I know she’s capable of being affecting, and, though, yeah, her world is derivative, at least it’s not gratingly irritating. I can see picking up the second book, but if it remains as bland and inoffensive and just plain boring as this, I can’t imagine reading the series through to the end.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
17 comments
"It’s a relationship that might as well be between asexuals."
Oh snap! Thanks for another grat review. Cant wait to read and see if I agree lol.
Ha, hope you enjoy it more than I did . . .
This is EXACTLY how I felt about the book. So alike it’s a little scary. The characters are what (didn’t) sell it for me – white bread all around.
Ugh, and I had such hopes. XD
Thanks for the comment, MP! Sounds like we have similar tastes.
I read this over the holidays and loved it, though mainly for how it was written rather than the characters.
Yes, the relationships are bland and out side of the banquet so are the descriptions. However, I got the feel that this was how it was intended to be. The Society controls everything and determines everything so there isn't as much freedom and beauty as you would expect from a YA romance. To me the point was to show Cassia fighting against all this blandness and trying to create a more colourful world for herself. I'm not sure it really worked so well in this one but it might play out better over the next books.
Interesting thoughts, FIC. I might agree that the blandness was perhaps intentional, but that kind of accuracy doesn’t necessarily make for a good *story* or a compelling read. And I’m always, first and foremost, a slave to story.
sometimes i think that ya publisher’s insistence on turning everything into a trilogy is really hurting the stories. imagine if this were a standalone book and we didn’t have a sequel or two to flesh out the story. would matched been the better for it?
As a standalone volume? Almost undoubtedly. There just wasn't enough material here to sustain a whole book.
Have you ever read the giver? cause if not then you should, and you will better understand the way her writing was. It was meant to be like that, sort of bland. The whole point of the book is to show readers how bland and controlling the society is and why Cassia wouldn’t want to live there. And with the twilight comment, I’d have to respectfully disagree. I think that Cassia had much, much more characterization then Bella and that Ky had and Xander had way more characterization then twilight. I liked it more then twilight in fact. I think that the characters were given as much depth as they could considering what the book was about. Which was how the society controls every bit of your life, even your emotions. Personally, I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone. But I would agree with you Phoebe that the author could have described the kissing scenes more and had more intimate feelings.
Hi Livvy, thanks for the comment.
I am, in fact familiar with The Giver (and its sequels–I do compare this book to it in the first paragraph of my review, after all). However, Lowry is far more successful at creating a sort of bleakness through her prose. Jonah’s world is bland, but (ironically enough!) his life and story are still interesting; meanwhile, Cassia’s life was bland, and her story repetitive.
If this was an intentional stylistic choice, it would have been more effective to show some evolution here. Start the book vividly, with the Matching Banquet. Then, plunge us into blandness. But as the story builds and develops, she could have then shown how her relationship with Ky made her life more passionate, varied, and interesting (isn’t that what love does? illuminate even the blandest aspects of our lives?). You know, showed some growth. For me, this was a pacing and development problem as much as anything else. I’m curious to see what Condie does in the second book (not always the case; I recently read a review copy of Delirium, a similar book by Lauren Oliver, and won’t be reading the sequel) but if she can’t sustain tension any better than she does here, I won’t be reading the third.
Anyway, thanks again for the comment.
OMG I LOVE this review, which is surprising because I also LOVE the book, but I love the amount of detail you went into and the details you brought up, even though I disagreed with a few of them — primarily the idea that the book is passionless, which I felt was sort of how it was "supposed" to be because of how these people had been raised and bred… like maybe the society was breeding for lifelessness if that makes sense.
Thanks for your comment, Jordyn!
I definitely understand your perspective about the blandness of the descriptions/Cassia's life. For that sort of metatextual commentary to work for me, though, it has to be a very specific kind of book. For whatever reason, this just didn't convince me. I hope that Condie shows us a bit more of her strength as a writer in the sequel!
Great review. You touched on many of the same issues I had while reading. I can tell Condie is genuinely talented and can write some great prose, so that wasn't the issue. The issues I had were with, as you mentioned, the lack of passion. I felt like I should care more, but I didn't.
I've wondered a bit about the source of this blandness–might it be a reflection of Condie's values/religious upbringing? Or could it have really been intentional, as some commentors have suggested? Either way, it's problematic–no matter how pretty the writing, I really need to care about the characters, to feel like they have vital, meaningful lives, to really be fully invested. Anyway, thanks for the comment, Steph!
This book was up there with The Book Thief by Markus Zosak. Cassia was, for me, completely relatable. She wasn’t a static character, Ally Condie moved her through the book, changing her, ever so slightly, with every page. A lot of reviews, especially this one, talk about the utter lack of compelling-ness in the book, and how the characters are boring, the descriptions vague (with the exception of the banquet) and the plot unexciting and predictable. The fact of the matter is this: is every single human life full of teen romances with guys who’d like to rip their girlfriend’s throats out? Does every single story have to contain obscene amounts of making out to be considered passionate and meaningful?
In my opinion, Condie did an excellent job of showing the depth of Cassia’s struggle, the depth of her romance with Ky, and the issue at the heart of the book. The main message that Condie is trying to get across is this: Will you allow someone else to govern your life, to make decisions for you, to steal your color? Or will you fight back, no matter the consequences? Will you go gently? Or will you rage against the dying of the light?
That might be true–that might have been her intention, to mirror her thematics in her structure. It left me cold, though. And bored. Mostly bored.
I think stories should be compelling in addition to being clever.
Also, in light of the relative lack of passion between the protags, I actually found their romance quite shallow–I never understood what they found compelling in one another.