Little Brother

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow is an important book. Its target audience is apparently teenagers, and it is certainly a great idea to get teenagers to think about freedom and security and how those two topics interact and influence each other. But all readers of all ages and kinds can get benefit from the material in this book. My primary quibble with the book is that it contains a lot of information that might better have been better presented as a non-fiction work. But then, it might not have reached its apparent target audience as readily as it does, so I understand the choice. Another quibble, my only other, is the first-person voice of the story. I don't like first-person perspective in most novels for the reason I don't like it here: it's a third-person story with a first-person viewpoint. By that I mean, the first-person isn't believable: long conversations are presented verbatim and the narrator speaks like a novelist. We get no indication that our protagonist has an eidetic memory or does well in creative writing class, or anything else that would make the style of the novel ring true from a first-person perspective. This doesn't just happen in Little Brother, but in most first-person stories with which I am familiar. But as I mentioned, this is just a quibble. Little Brother's protagonist does have, despite its artificiality, a voice that is important to be heard. Topics such as state repression, hacking, liberty, and individual rights are examined in this novel, topics that any free-thinking person who wants to remain physically and intellectually free should consider. Little Brother, while it might not be great literature, is very important and useful in that regard.