Official Review: Vain conceit by Michelle Standing

[aaronhattle]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Vain conceit" by Michelle Standing.]

"Vain Conceit" by Michelle Standing is a short story that is set in a Dystopia-like Britain. It focuses on two characters, an elderly neighbor and the daughter of the family that lives next door. The neighbor, unknown to the family, is one of the cold, arrogant True Ones who control almost every aspect of the government and even the lives of individual people. The girl and her parents, mere Simple Ones, only think that the neighbor is a member of parliament. The story begins when the neighbor decides that the girl is useless to society as she is, and that she must be made a Psychic One to make her worth something to society.

The story is split between points of view from the neighbor and the daughter of the family. The neighbor reveals that he is planning to begin the process to turn the daughter into a Psychic One, someone who performs dangerous jobs in order to improve society, such as working undercover to catch drug dealers. He does this partly because the girl is not intelligent and possesses no natural way to be useful and partly because he suspects she is a lesbian, and thus cannot even be useful for reproduction. The story follows the girl's point of view as she descends into the madness that accompanies becoming a Psychic One and starts to discover the truth.

There were couple of things that I liked about this story. It reads as a Dystopian work, and is very reminiscent of V for Vendetta and other Dystopian works, albeit most of the story is told from a ruler's point of view. When I started reading, I was also aware of the many possibilities that the story could go in, which was exciting.

Unfortunately, there were far more things that I didn't like about the story. My main complaint is that the story is telling, not showing. We are given paragraphs upon paragraphs of exposition and characters saying exactly what they feel, rather than being shown the effects and consequences of these feelings. There is very little dialogue throughout the story, which weakens its ability to show even more. The dialogue that was shown was stiff and wooden and didn't sound like how people actually talk.

My other major complaint is that the story makes the issues that it's trying to discuss too obvious. The main offender is the True One's stance on homosexuality. The girl contrasts with him, having an open-minded live and let live philosophy. Of course, issues like these are going to be discussed in a Dystopian work, but with subtlety. Without subtlety, the impact of just what consequences these issues cause is significantly lessened.

I would suggest that the story could have been much better if the focus had been on the girl more than the old neighbor. Following her descent into madness was a good idea, but it wasn't followed closely enough. Also, we aren't allowed to really connect to her, as we don't see her interactions with other people, and she doesn't even have a name. That's fine for the cold neighbor, but she's clearly the hero of the story.

In conclusion, I reluctantly give this story two stars our of four. I enjoyed it somewhat, but the fundamental difference in telling vs showing would keep me from recommending it to a friend. I could see some people still enjoying it, however. Overall, I just feel that the story had so much potential that wasn't tapped into.

***
Buy "Vain conceit" on Amazon