Lili Wilkinson is one of Australia’s best Young Adult authors, and for good reason. Her work is high concept, but accessible. Her writing is readable without being overly simplistic or impenetrably complex. Her plots are beautifully placed, with just the right amount of exposition to keep the reader interested, but not so much as to overwhelm. It was why I was very excited to review The Erasure Initiative, and was in no way disappointed when I finished the book.
Drawing on a science-fiction (ish) setting, the novel is told from the first-person perspective of a girl who wakes up on a self-driving bus without any of her memories. She doesn’t know where she is, she has no idea who she is, and she doesn’t know any of the other people on the bus with her. Her nametag says she is called Cecily, but she has no way of verifying that. It’s an intriguing premise that’s only heightened by what happens next. Cecily, along with the other six passengers, are asked to answer several versions of the classic trolley problem (you are in a trolley, ahead on the tracks are 6 people strapped down, you can pull a lever which will divert the trolley onto a different set of tracks where there is 1 person strapped down, do you pull the lever?). From the outset then, the book is intriguing and it pulls the reader along with the multitude of unanswered questions. What is the ultimate purpose of this? Why this group of people? How and when would such a series of simulations end – a bus after all, isn’t exactly a long-term place of residence.
Following the runaway success of The Good Place (and who didn’t love that twist at the end of Season 1?), this book feels like the more mature (and at times, more sophisticated) dark twist on the philosophical themes, ideas, and questions the series introduced – even the question of salvation. I don’t want to say too because the experience of starting with the same blank slate as Cecily and joining her on the journey of reveals is part of the enjoyment to be experienced within the narrative. It means that while you are guided by Cecily’s interpretations of the information and facts, you can also step back and assess what’s going on and form your own conclusions. After all, isn’t that part of the fun that accompanies reading a thriller? I’m pleased to report that I picked one and a half of the twists.
Many of us ask ourselves, “am I a good person?” The story, subtly at first then with increasing urgency, puts the question before Cecily, and then adds to that a different question: ‘how do our experiences shape the kind of person we are?’ Of course, Cecily, and everybody else on the bus, don’t know who they were in their past lives, so the decisions they make regarding the moral problems put before them, the way they interact with each other, and the way they respond to the snippets of information which begin to emerge about who they were, raises an interesting series of questions which don’t always have clear-cut answers. The way the narrative unfolds serves to offer some answers, but, to my mind at least, leaves the ultimate conclusion in the hands of the reader.
Around the halfway mark, the story and scenario shift (yes, it was due to one of the twists I had picked – clever me). My first reaction as I was reading was to feel my suspension of disbelief waver as the complexity of the moral conundrums became increasingly severe, and practical rather than theoretical. However, I reflected on this quite a bit after I’d finished reading the book, and I realised that the whole story is about thought experiments. Thought experiments by their nature are isolated from reality, they allow us to entertain extremes without actually having to face the realities of what they are asking us. To return to the obvious parallel, I’m reminded of episodes 6 of season 2 in The Good Place, which is actually titled ‘the trolley problem’. Chidi is trying to explain ethics to Michael who is struggling to gasp the abstract nature of the scenarios before him, so they act them out. Suddenly made manifest, what becomes feels distant suddenly takes on an entirely different dimension. It’s the same in the second half of The Erasure Initiative; a series of moral conundrums is put before Cecily but in practical settings. As a result, they do feel extreme, as do the actions she chooses similarly feel extreme, but it works within the context of the premise that Wilkinson sets up.
In addition, nods to contemporary concerns (that certain companies have more power than countries, questions of election interference, flaws within the justice system) ground the plot, reminding us that moral questions and concerns are things we place importance on for good reason, and have insinuated themselves into my thoughts long after I turned the last page.
I was excited to pick up The Erasure Initiative and I was not disappointed. Despite its intensity, it’s a great escape from the current things plaguing (literally) us at the present. I recommend.
The Erasure Initiative is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
I wake up, and for a few precious seconds I don’t realise there’s anything wrong.
The rumble of tyres on bitumen, and the hiss of air conditioning. The murmur of voices. The smell of air freshener. The cool vibration of glass against my forehead.
A girl wakes up on a self-driving bus. She has no memory of how she got there or who she is. Her nametag reads CECILY. The six other people on the bus are just like her: no memories, only nametags. There’s a screen on each seatback that gives them instructions. A series of tests begin, with simulations projected onto the front window of the bus. The passengers must each choose an outcome; majority wins. But as the testing progresses, deadly secrets are revealed, and the stakes get higher and higher. Soon Cecily is no longer just fighting for her freedom – she’s fighting for her life.
