Taken, by Edward Bloor
Bloor, Edward (2007). Taken. NY: Alfred A. Knopf. 247 pages.
I don't think I'm alone in judging Bloor's Tangerine (1997) the best of his growing oeuvre; however, I do maintain that Crusader (1999) didn't get nearly enough acclaim. Taken, Bloor's fifth novel, probably ranks number three of his books, at least in my reckoning. This comparatively (to Crusader, at least) slim speculative fiction offering describes a future United States in which the wealthy and impoverished classes are clearly divided. A young teen in the year 2035, Charity Meyers is a member of Florida's upper class; she and her family--her alcoholic, ex-inventor father and her ex-stepmother, a reality video television host--live in a guarded community with two servants cum security guards. Charity attends school via classroom video screen where she is taught, along with the typical three "R's," how to react to a potential kidnapping. This kind of lesson is depressingly de rigeur in a world of extreme have's and have-not's in which kidnapping is a primary means of underclass advancement. When Charity is kidnapped, she slowly learns that the plans for her taking are a bit less conventional and she begins to reconsider the life of privilege to which she has grown accustomed.
No spoiled-girl-gets-kidnapped-and-learns-to-sympathize-with-the-poor narrative here; Bloor's novel is a bit more complex and includes a couple of surprising (to me, at least) twists. There is clear social commentary here, which sometimes threatens to overwhelm the book; however, the flashbacks that pepper the captivity narrative, in which Charity recalls Christmas with her family, are sharp satire. As most good speculative fiction does, Bloor's novel doesn't so much tell us about the new and future world imagined within the novel's pages; instead, the details of this class-divided society are slowly revealed to us in scenes illuminating the social dichotomy the author imagines. The story's emphasis on healthcare and equal access to it make the novel timely, and, though Bloor's comments are apt (in my opinion, at least), I wonder if this topical content won't date the novel. That is, while we expect speculative fiction to address contemporary issues, the fact that this novel does so with such specificity almost limits its application. That said, good speculative fiction requires a compelling narrative in order to really "work," and the kidnapping drama at the core of the story is nicely suspenseful.