Divided Kingdom

by Rupert Thomson

Book Overview

One night a boy who comes to be called Thomas Parry is taken from his family, caught up in a comprehensive unraveling of what had been a united kingdom. Reacting to their country's inexorable decline into consumerism, turpitude, racism, and violence, the powers that be establish four independent republics based on the perceived nature of the citizens assigned to each. These new partitions are reinforced with concrete barricades and razor wire. Renamed,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400076595
• ISBN13: 9781400076598
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Interesting Dystopian Novel

This novel is different from the novels of Thomson I have read. It's narrated by the main character, Thomas Parry (Michael Micklewright before The Rearrangement), and so it doesn't contain as much of the brilliant, hallucinatory, realer-than-real description Thomson usually delivers. But this is perfectly appropriate. Thomas is not Thomson. He's more staid, less easily jolted, more likable but more conventional. The novel is a dystopia. Like most dystopias, a perfect world has been engineered, but gone wrong. But it isn't as nightmarish as "1984" or "The Handmaid's Tale" or even as eerie as "Brave New World." "Brave New World" is creepy to us, but isn't creepy to its inhabitants, because they have been genetically-engineered and heavily-conditioned to be near-robots. They function perfectly, and are perfectly content. They are like ants who never question their society. As in "Brave New World," people in "Divided Kingdom" are divided up--but here they are divided by temperament--according to the old idea of 4 humors: choleric (aggressive, impulsive, self-centered), sanguine (optimistic, cheerful, outgoing), phlegmatic (emotional, spiritual, altruistic), and melancholic (pessimistic, lugubrious, doomed). It becomes obvious that this system is over-simple. Thomas takes a hair-raising (and illegal) odyssey through all 4 "kingdoms" and sees firsthand how predictable, but also unpredictable, they are. The book gains momentum as it goes, and during Tom's illegal journey becomes by turns exciting, scary, wondrous, and sad. The ending is breathtaking, horrifying, uplifting, and oddly calm. A tremendously insightful, moving book.

Eerily prescient

I heard about Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson on one of my favorite book podcasts - Books on the Nightstand (which is now a weekly podcast, by the way!!) so I got it out of the library. This novel is a dystopian novel, in the same vein as The Handmaid's Tale , 1984 and a Brave New World. The book starts out starkly. It is obviously winter and the setting is obviously in what used to be the United Kingdom. An eight year old boy is ripped from his family's home and placed in a school - more of a re-education center actually - during the early part of the ReArrangement. The Government has ordered the removal of children and other adults during the early part of the rearrangement and moved to different zones, depending upon psychology, or the four humors: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine. Placed into an orphanage and renamed Thomas Parry, he is then transferred to a new family in the Red District. As he grows into adulthood, he becomes a rising star in the Red Quarer bureaucracy, where his main responsibility is to oversee the expulsion of people to other quarters. During a business trip to the Blue Quarter, he goes to a nightclub where he receives visions of what his life was life before the Re-Arrangement and, as a result, he begins to question his absolute faith in the current scheme of things. He actually manages to visit each of the other quarters during this voyage of self-discovery. Thomas becomes caught up in a terror attack in the Yellow Quarter; is shipwrecked on the coast of the Blue Quarter, and is farmed off to an angst-ridden Green Quarter boarding house, eventually escaping and joining the itinerant and stateless White People, a band of nomadic outsiders who drift aimlessly from quarter to quarter, spurned and shunned by the populations of this new and unsettling world. He realizes, over the course of his journeys, that while people may be different, they really just long to be together again and not forcefully separated. I loved this novel - it was depressing and bleak and eerily prescient. One gets the feeling that our society is slowly getting to the point where our governments may feel that it has no choice but to separate people out depending upon their psychological make-up, even if it means tearing up families and exacerbating the evils that they intended to fight by splitting people up in the first place. I found myself able to explore my own perceptions about the role of the individual and the family in society, while reading about Thomas' perceptions and experiences within the various "families" that he encounters and/or becomes a part of. I really enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to all.

Disturbing - and Marvelous

I'm shocked and disappointed by how few reviews have been written of this novel. Thomson has created an interesting premise and pulled through with the kind of dystopian novel that makes you look at the world around you in a new light, not to mention gives you great joy at the craft. I LOVED this book - picked it up in the library, and then bought a copy as a gift - and am reading it again. I may have to buy another copy because I may not want to part with it. Thomson's writing provides imagery, suspense, great characters. A fascinating work right up the alley of fans of the dystopian fiction genre. Also important, it will appeal to those who don't need everything spelled out and on the surface and are willing to let things unfold.

"They took the worst part of us and built a system out of it and it worked"

In Divided Kingdom society has become troubled and fragmented - obsessed with acquisition and celebrity, it is a place defined by misery, envy, and greed. Crime is rampant; the courts are swamped, the prisons overflowing, the divorce rate following marriage quickly and predictably. Faced with lawlessness and chaos, the current government - hidden in an underground bunker - is forced to make a radical decision. The Kingdom is to be divided into four countries, this political solution, or "rearrangement" comes with considerable risk, but is seen as the only alternative to avert certain anarchy. Each citizen is psychologically assessed and placed, sometimes with force, into four administrative units, each corresponding to one of the medieval "humours." There's the Red Quarter, inhabited by the cheerfully sanguine, and where Matthew Micklewright, our main protagonist, then aged eight, lives; the Yellow Quarter, where the choleric rage and beat each other up; the Blue Quarter, populated by the stoically phlegmatic; and the "Green Quarter that harbors melancholic depressives. Concrete boundaries are thrown up, rigidly controlled by the border police, and each country is sealed, fearful of the threat of psychological contamination. The rearrangement deliberately manufactured to create a climate of suspicion and denial between each country - people burying parts of their personalities that don't fit, and hiding their secrets that could now be judged and condemned. One night, as the roundup begins, young Matthew is cruelly separated from his parents and taken to an immensely sinister boarding school, where he is lectured on the Rearrangements political rationale. The country had become "a troubled place," an enthusiastic Miss Groves tells the class, and this resolution was seen as the only alternative. Subsequently our hero -now renamed Thomas Parry- is given a new family and groomed for advancement in the Red Quarter regime as a civil servant. After years of studying and career diligence, Thomas is finally given the senior administrative job he has been aiming for; this involves the ongoing process of psychological testing and relocation of members of the population who fail to meet the demands of his quarter. Now he is able to attend commissions and attend cross-border conferences, a privilege available only to the autocratic elite. Dispatched to a cross border conference in the Blue Quarter, Thomas clandestinely visits a nightclub, the Bathysphere. Shocking images of his past come back to haunt him, of his mother, and of his first true love. He isn't sure what to make of these memories, all he knows is that he has experienced something so totally profound and addictive that it skews his sanguine nature, setting him on a course of self-discovery as he travels through the divided kingdom's four quarters. Thomas becomes caught up in a terror attack in the Yellow Quarter; is shipwrecked on the coast of the Blue Quarter, and is farmed off to an

Lovely

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about a future "United Kingdom" that has become divided. Imagine a world where everyone is sorted by which medieval "humour" they fit into -- all the choleric people are together, separate from all the melancholics, etc. I thought it an interesting premise that gave structure to the author's exploration of identify, value, etc. My only qualm comes from the fact that I'm not an intellectual and usually like my books to end in a happy summation wherein all mysteries are solved. But, as in real life, it doesn't happen here. I happened upon this book by accident -- I was locked out of my house and forced to spend the evening at the local library, with the reward of discovering a new author whose books I look forward to reading. I recommend this book to anyone with an evening to pass and a desire to read something that isn't in the common run of things.