The Swell - L.G.Jenkins

 I’ve read both stories in the Crowned Worthy series by Lydia Jenkins and I love them. I’m a fan of dystopian fiction overall. I love the way that authors fuse those things we take for granted in our present world and manipulate them in various ways in a futuristic world. It can only serve to encourage us to consider the future of our societies.

The Swell is a digital novella which probably accounts for my hesitation in downloading and reading it as I prefer physical books. I never want to live in a dystopia, where there are no paper books! But I can’t really call myself a fan of Ms. Jenkins work if I don’t put aside my ereading antipathy. Reader, I did! I downloaded it.

One of the main ideas in The Swell is the opposite of inherited wealth - inherited debt. Jonathan Plank, who is 60, which means in this dystopia that he only has five more years left before his “departure“ by the Corporation. (Reminded me a bit of Logan’s Run, but they only got to live to be 30!) that’s not just five years left to live, it’s five years left to try and earn enough to pay off his inherited debt otherwise his children will inherit it. 

Jonathan is an interesting character because he is at heart a moral and upstanding man but the story shows us what despair can do to an individual - a despair borne out of love for his children and their descendants. I don’t want to spoil the plot. Suffice to say I found elements of The Hunger Games and Noughts and Crosses in the atmospheres and events described which gave rise to some interesting moral considerations in the story. Towards the end when all seems lost for Jonathan there was an unexpected twist. 

‘Make good decisions. Take it from someone who’s made a lot of bad ones.’ 

That’s the advice Jonathan is given from another character at the end of the book.The final chapter is a lovely device that works so well in a short story, a seemingly ordinary concluding chapter where the conflict and hopelessness that Jonathan carried with him seems to have been overshadowed by those values in life that we need, that we should place above others - love, honesty, friendship.

The short story is often an underrated genre. Whatever fiction genres you enjoy I think this story encapsulates so much of what is valuable about a short story. It’s succinct, thought provoking and reaches a resolution that is ultimately satisfying.