Review: “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi
I picked up “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi, not because it was a new release, but because it is the 2009 Nebula Award winner.
The events take place in a world where all food is bio engineered. Plagues have wiped out natural crops and continue to be a serious threat, leaving a starving, desperate world. Enter the “calorie corporations”, the big companies that control food, turning calories into currency and bio-terrorism into a tool for profits. In addition to food, there is a new race of bio engineered people, grown & programmed to perform duties for the Japanese. Though accepted there, these New People are shunned in Bangkok where the story takes place. This new race of people are often called “windups” for their tell-tale stop/start stuttering movement – hence the book’s title.
The cast of characters is rather large and often seem unrelated. Emiko, the windup girl the book is named for, is introduced in chapter 3 but doesn’t become a major player until much later. Another character begins as a key player and continues to affect events throughout the pages, though in a very unexpected manner. Anderson Lake is the first character to make an appearance and continues to be a dominant figure until the end. As the book jumps from story to story, the plotline initially seemed disjointed. However, as the narrative progressed Bacigalupi wove these diversities into one intense story line that presses forward towards the climax.
I had high expectations for “The Windup Girl”. After all, it was written by a Hugo nominated and Locus Award winning author. The novel itself earned top honors from The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. It had a lot to live up to. I thought the book started out slowly. While initially reading, the world was so alien that it took awhile to become familiar enough to immerse myself in it. Those first few chapters seemed interminable at the time but they built a strong foundation for the environment and characters. By the end of chapter three I couldn’t put the book down. And by the time I closed the back cover, I felt that it had more than met my expectations. This won’t leave you with warm fuzzies. But Bacigalupi shows skill in creating a believable and spine chilling future as well as characters that draw the reader in. You might not LIKE all of them, but you’ll care what happens to them.
