In a world where serenity is prized and passion is feared, happiness is enticing. I love how she falls in love with him not just because of his good looks (though he is hot), but because of the tremor of laughter in his voice, and the constant look of amusement in his eyes. Only three months before her procedure, she meets a boy named Alex, who has the scars of the cured, but whom Lena saw laughing when something messes up an evaluation interview. Lena’s desire to forget a completely different kind of pain made sense to me, and showed me how this procedure could be seen as a good thing, even by intelligent, non-brainwashed-drone individuals like Lena.īut Lena falls in love. My natural reaction, once I found out the procedure destroyed all passion and not just romantic love, was to wonder how anyone could think that was a good idea. I love that the heroine begins the novel looking forward to the procedure, and horrified whenever Hana makes negative comments about it. They cannot take it.” Lena is heartbroken by her mother’s death, and looks forward to being cured and freed from all that pain. All Lena can remember is her mother laughing and dancing with her (then immediately checking to see if anyone had noticed too much laughter after all is a symptom of delirium) and her mother fiercely telling her, “I love you. When she was very young, her mother committed suicide because she was too infected by amor deliria nervosa to be cured. Unlike Hana, however, Lena can’t wait for the procedure. Cliches aside, if you remove all violent emotion, you’ll have to remove the good with the bad. Hana, the best friend of protagonist Lena, tells her early on, “You know you can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes, right?” And it’s true. You will no longer feel depressed, but you will also never enjoy your hobbies with as much fervour as before. You will never been heartbroken, but you will also view your friends and children with cold logic (you’ll give your baby milk because he’s hungry and needs food to live, not because you can’t stand to see him cry). My sister, who also read this book, called it practically a lobotomy, and that’s what it is: the doctors surgically remove every last bit of passion. No more Eponine-style romances for me! Thing is, the procedure doesn’t just kill off romantic love. When I first heard the premise, my cynical brain immediately thought it was brilliant. In Lauren Oliver’s Delirium, love has been diagnosed as a disease, and everyone is required to undergo the cure when they turn eighteen.

Delirium oliver