The Lives We've Yet to Live

What makes life in a futuristic dystopia unbearable for a teenaged girl? Is it the social chaos created by reincarnation suddenly becoming a disastrous biological reality, the army of corporate contractors out to profit from a system of mandatory euthanasia, or the seamy underworld of criminal organizations that help the rich to evade death-for a price? Or is it the very fact of life itself? As runaway Phoenix journeys across a blighted landscape of sexual predators, urban decay, and post-millennial anomie that is as jarringly familiar as it is alien, dumpy and middle-aged Virgil ambivalently stars in a reality-TV show about his metamorphosis into a dreaded "Enforcer." In this wickedly transgressive deconstruction of science fiction's most cherished traditions, Melissa Reddish has created a touching, anarchic anti-parable about mortality, identity, and the fragile bonds that bind us.