The Unit

Dorrit Weger is plenty happy with her new accommodations—a tastefully furnished spacious apartment, on the government’s dime. The first hitch, however, is the sheer volume of monitoring cameras—every nook is covered, to ensure she doesn’t try to kill herself. Weger has been deemed “dispensable,” an aging citizen without children, unmarried and working an “unessential” job. She and others—women over 50, men over 60—have been sequestered at the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material, where they serve as test subjects for experiments and as organ harvesting grounds for the rest of the population.

Despite a fairly broad premise, Holmqvist handles her dystopia with muted, subtle care. Unlike most visions of a dark future, there is no precipitating apocalypse, no malicious government takeover. The arrangement has long been status quo, and the nationwide acquiescence (or support, even, given that it was voted in by referendum) lends an unforgiving creep factor to Dorrit’s situation. Even she seems basically okay with it, convinced it’s for the greater good. Of course, when she meets a man and falls in love, she starts feeling less dispensable and starts pushing back against the unit.

Neither satirical nor polemical, The Unit manages to express a fair degree of moral outrage without ever moralizing. Though Holmqvist moves a little too slowly through the story to call The Unit a thriller, it has enough spooks to make it a feminist, philosophical page-turner.

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