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A review by melanie_page
Bald New World by Peter Tieryas Liu
5.0
Nick Guan remembers the Great Baldification, the day everyone’s hair--all of it--fell out. Eleven years old and alone, he remembers recording the mass chaos and rioting outside his family’s apartment and using his cell phone to capture footage of a dead man on the street. Fast forward to his adulthood: Nick meets Larry Chao in the army during the African Wars, a man who becomes Nick’s best friend and employer. Larry recruits Nick to shoot movies, and they become more like brothers than friends. Another thing about Larry: his family owns the most profitable wig factory in the world. Twenty-five years after the Great Baldification and everyone is just as vain about hair as they were when they had it. There is great money to be made in the creation of realistic hair, and Larry’s is the only company has the recipe, making for it dangerous for him and those close to him...
Bald New World employs wacky, outrageous antics seen in comic books, adding a playful goofiness to situations. When two “thugs” bust in a room, they try to enter at the same time and get stuck in the door together. Instead of your typical cock or dog fighting in the ghetto, we get crickets--yes, crickets. Players must sync up with the cricket’s brain to fight, a game that proves dangerous when Nick’s brain is trapped in the cricket’s for too long and he tries to fly and chirp his legs to get attention.
The seriousness of the novel comes from Peter Tieryas Liu’s predictions for the future based on threats to humankind today. Behind a camera, life doesn’t seem like it’s happening to Nick, and why would he want to experience it? Instead of gun control, Americans are all heavily armed; the FDA is owned by a fast-food company that sells what passes for cow because they say it does; white bread, carbs, and sweets are the evils in society, not poverty and starvation; people’s faces are so modified from extensive plastic surgery that magazines must claim their models are not changed; advertisements flood the characters, even in dreams, but to make them stop a person has to pay a fee; fear abounds, so there are cameras everywhere at the insistence of citizens, creating a lack of privacy; and employees are seen as worthless, so they are threatened with the claim that there are others willing to replace them for any infraction. Liu’s predictions are so close to what Americans debate today that the novel leaves behind a smudge of fear and depression from the thought of said predictions becoming the reality. The author knows what scares us and creates a world from our fears.
While Nick races around the globe (travel is much faster now) trying to survive and understand the mystery of Larry and his wig factory, readers also learn about Nick’s past. His parents were horrible people who unpredictably used violence to control others, a trait that Nick learns and unknowingly uses against his wife--that is, until she divorces him. It is for this reason Nick feels that Larry is his whole family. This plot thread adds a sense of humanity to the story, creating emotions on a personal, rather than global or national, scale.
One point of contention in the novel is Liu’s treatment of female characters; nearly every one of them “simpers.” Early on, a women is described as “coquettish, biting her lips, demurely watching [Larry and Nick].” Another “looked like a doll as she regarded [Nick] with plaintive eyes.” It’s important to pay attention, though. Notice that Nick is against plastic surgery and favors traditional beauty. Also, he’s a follower; the only way he can take the world is behind the “safety” of a camera lens, putting him in a less commanding role that many female characters. Overall, women could have been handled with more care, as they changed their appearances, not their brains. Surely, Nick must perceive this.
More careful treatment of female characters would have made Bald New World a more savory book, but the overall characterization of disasters waiting to happen in the United States, ones that we’re happy to ignore until they’re upon us, is frightening, making the reader want to know how it turns out and if all is hopeless.
Bald New World employs wacky, outrageous antics seen in comic books, adding a playful goofiness to situations. When two “thugs” bust in a room, they try to enter at the same time and get stuck in the door together. Instead of your typical cock or dog fighting in the ghetto, we get crickets--yes, crickets. Players must sync up with the cricket’s brain to fight, a game that proves dangerous when Nick’s brain is trapped in the cricket’s for too long and he tries to fly and chirp his legs to get attention.
The seriousness of the novel comes from Peter Tieryas Liu’s predictions for the future based on threats to humankind today. Behind a camera, life doesn’t seem like it’s happening to Nick, and why would he want to experience it? Instead of gun control, Americans are all heavily armed; the FDA is owned by a fast-food company that sells what passes for cow because they say it does; white bread, carbs, and sweets are the evils in society, not poverty and starvation; people’s faces are so modified from extensive plastic surgery that magazines must claim their models are not changed; advertisements flood the characters, even in dreams, but to make them stop a person has to pay a fee; fear abounds, so there are cameras everywhere at the insistence of citizens, creating a lack of privacy; and employees are seen as worthless, so they are threatened with the claim that there are others willing to replace them for any infraction. Liu’s predictions are so close to what Americans debate today that the novel leaves behind a smudge of fear and depression from the thought of said predictions becoming the reality. The author knows what scares us and creates a world from our fears.
While Nick races around the globe (travel is much faster now) trying to survive and understand the mystery of Larry and his wig factory, readers also learn about Nick’s past. His parents were horrible people who unpredictably used violence to control others, a trait that Nick learns and unknowingly uses against his wife--that is, until she divorces him. It is for this reason Nick feels that Larry is his whole family. This plot thread adds a sense of humanity to the story, creating emotions on a personal, rather than global or national, scale.
One point of contention in the novel is Liu’s treatment of female characters; nearly every one of them “simpers.” Early on, a women is described as “coquettish, biting her lips, demurely watching [Larry and Nick].” Another “looked like a doll as she regarded [Nick] with plaintive eyes.” It’s important to pay attention, though. Notice that Nick is against plastic surgery and favors traditional beauty. Also, he’s a follower; the only way he can take the world is behind the “safety” of a camera lens, putting him in a less commanding role that many female characters. Overall, women could have been handled with more care, as they changed their appearances, not their brains. Surely, Nick must perceive this.
More careful treatment of female characters would have made Bald New World a more savory book, but the overall characterization of disasters waiting to happen in the United States, ones that we’re happy to ignore until they’re upon us, is frightening, making the reader want to know how it turns out and if all is hopeless.