Delirium (Delirium Trilogy, 1) - Hardcover

Oliver, Lauren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061726826 ISBN 13: 9780061726828

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2011

Synopsis

There was a time when love was the most important thing in the world. People would go to the end of the earth to find it. They would tell lies for it. Even kill for it. Then, at last, they found the cure. Now, everything is different. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the government demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Haloway has always looked forward to the day when she'll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy. But then, with only ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable...

About this title

Review:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011: Lena Haloway is content in her safe, government-managed society. She feels (mostly) relaxed about the future in which her husband and career will be decided, and looks forward to turning 18, when she’ll be cured of deliria, a.k.a. love. She tries not to think about her mother’s suicide (her last words to Lena were a forbidden “I love you”) or the supposed “Invalid” community made up of the uncured just beyond her Portland, Maine, border. There’s no real point—she believes her government knows how to best protect its people, and should do so at any cost. But 95 days before her cure, Lena meets Alex, a confident and mysterious young man who makes her heart flutter and her skin turn red-hot. As their romance blossoms, Lena begins to doubt the intentions of those in power, and fears that her world will turn gray should she submit to the procedure. In this powerful and beautifully written novel, Lauren Oliver, the bestselling author of Before I Fall, throws readers into a tightly controlled society where options don’t exist, and shows not only the lengths one will go for a chance at freedom, but also the true meaning of sacrifice. --Jessica Schein


Lauren Oliver’s Delirium Playlist

In Delirium, the government requires that all teenagers be cured of love, a.k.a. deliria, to keep society safe. But 95 days before her treatment, Lena Haloway falls for a boy--and must face the truth about her own feelings and the world in which she lives.

In this exclusive playlist, Lauren Oliver shares the songs that capture this haunting novel about the power of love and what one will risk in order to keep it.

Gayle Forman and Lauren Oliver: Author One-on-One

Gayle Forman is is a self-described "perpetual teenager" and an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous publications. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children. She is the author of Where She Went and If I Stay. Recently she sat down with Lauren Oliver to discuss their work. Read the resulting interview below, or turn the tables to see what happened when Lauren interviewed Gayle.

From Gayle Forman: Lauren Oliver is kind of mind-blowing. She wrote her intensely moving debut, Before I Fall when she was 26, which seems impossible given the book’s depth and wisdom. She followed up with the deliciously provocative love story Delirium, the first of a trilogy, and her first middle-grade book, Liesl & Po comes out in the fall of 2011. On top of that, she’s constantly cooking up book ideas for her literary development company. Somehow, she managed to slow down long enough for us to talk shop over lunch in our mutual hometown, Brooklyn.

Gayle: You have like 100 balls in the air. Are you one of those people who thrives on an insane amount of activity?

Lauren: I’ve been busy and overextended my whole life. I wrote half of Before I Fall while I had a full-time job, was a full-time grad student, and worked part-time in a nightclub. I wrote the first half of the book on my phone on the subway. I’d email the chapters to myself.

Gayle: You wrote the book on your phone?

Lauren: It’s very rare that I write on my computer. A lot of times I’m writing on subways or in the back of cabs or on airplanes. I know the exact quantity of lines on my BlackBerry and how it relates to word count.

Gayle: Well, that brings me right to my question about process. How does an idea become a book for you? How did Delirium arrive?

Lauren: I’d read an essay by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that said that all great books are either about death or love and I’d already written about death. And I started thinking that I’d never written a love story. It was out of my comfort zone. The next day I was at the gym, and the TV was on and the news report was all about the swine flu epidemic. It was the latest in the flu scares. And I thought it was so weird how easily people become panicked. You can convince people that anything is an epidemic. So much is propaganda. And the two ideas just combined in my head. And the character of Lena started narrating immediately.

Gayle: Moral of the story, budding writers: Go to the gym.

Lauren: Most of my breakthrough ideas come at the gym or while showering.

Gayle: Me too! And I’ll run out and start writing and be dripping in a towel.

Lauren: I’ve actually ruined computers that way. I think what happens is punctuated equilibrium: a period when changes are accumulating but not visibly, the simmering is happening. Then, when your mind is very relaxed, what was unconscious becomes conscious.

Gayle: On the surface, there’s a very big leap between your first two books. Before I Fall follows Sam, a prototypical mean girl who has to relive the last day of her life while Delirium follows Lena who lives in a creepy world in which love has been outlawed. But really, both of these girls start out conformists and challenge the constraints on their lives.

Lauren: Transformation is very important to me. I definitely am very interested in how people become who they are. In change. In characters who are damaged who and who feel initially unlovable—and in their redemption through feelings of love.

Gayle: Who are you more like, Lena or Sam?

Lauren: Sam is more similar to how I was in high school. I was rebellious. I went out and partied and did all the bad things that she did. Lena is just... she’s so obedient and so scared of doing anything wrong. I was so fond of her. I kind of loved her in this way, I felt so protective of her. She’s so fragile and also brave.

Gayle: That was exactly how I felt about Mia in If I Stay. I loved the strength of both Sam and Lena, in relation to their love interests. Even in Delirium, where Alex is the one who sparks Lena’s rebellion, she’s no damsel in distress.

Lauren: I don’t believe in damsels. That’s not a model of femininity or heroism I subscribe to. Everyone has to learn to save themselves. It can be through the mechanisms of loving other people but you have to learn to save yourself.

Gayle: Dystopian fiction is very hot right now. Did you have any idea you’d be on the cutting edge of this trend?

Lauren: I never heard that word when I wrote Delirium. I mean, I knew what it meant but not as a category. Delirium is supposed to be a meditation on love, what it does, good and bad. Because there have been times when if I could have reached inside to take out my own heart out, I would’ve. Books can’t come from categories; they come from a desire to say something about the world.

From the Back Cover:

Lauren Oliver's short stories about Hana, Annabel, and Raven— riveting characters from the bestselling Delirium series— are collected here in print for the first time.

The three short stories in this collection expand and enrich the Delirium world, illuminating events and characters through new perspectives.

Hana adds nuance to the life-changing summer before best friends Lena and Hana are to be cured—a moment when the girls' paths diverge and their futures are altered forever.

Annabel untangles the mysteries surrounding Lena's mother, detailing her journey from teenage runaway to prisoner of the state.

And Raven crackles with the intensity of its title character, the fierce leader of a rebel group in the Wilds who plays an integral role in the resistance.

This thrilling collection also includes an excerpt from Requiem, the final novel in Lauren Oliver's New York Times bestselling series.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0061726826
• ISBN 13: 9780061726828
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448