The Blue Chair

by Joyce Thompson

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380016567
• ISBN13: 9780380016563
• Release Date: June 1981
• Publisher: Avon Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Life & death matters

In a future just a day or two ahead of our own, Eve Harmon has turned 75. Because she gave birth to children in the past, she isn't eligible for the immortality treatments available to childless Westerners. Nor is she eligible for medical treatment beyond that of pain relief, despite the discovery of a lump in her breast. So she begins to reflect on her life & its worth, while waiting for death. And in facing the past, she prepares for the final end so few of her contemporaries will ever know. Joyce Thompson has created a frighteningly plausible future here, not that different from our present. Immortality requires a more stable society, with more strictures & regulations, administered by an increasingly impersonal & heartless bureaucracy. Third World peoples work for the immortal West as indentured servants, practically slaves in all but name. And despite the potentially limitless life of this new society, it's increasingly empty & rigid, devoid of much real joy. But as Eve periodically retires to her beloved blue chair to look at her own life, she also begins a new one, realizing that her humanity is all the deeper & richer for being so ephemeral. At first in small ways, then in larger ones, she defies the mores of her society & strives to live a whole & meaningful life, however short it may be. A fine addition to the shelf of dystopian literature, with a strong humanistic bent, it's definitely a book in need of reprinting!