Subject: Review of BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS by Nancy Kress

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 07:07:46 GMT

BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS by Nancy Kress
             Tor, ISBN 0-312-85749-7, 1994, 316pp, $22.95
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Last year Nancy Kress expanded her Hugo-award-winning novella
"Beggars in Spain" to a novel.  Now she's written a sequel, and while
some may say this is too much of a good thing, on the whole BEGGARS AND
CHOOSERS works.

     At the beginning of the 22nd Century, there are three groups of
people in the world: the Sleepless, the genetically enhanced
("donkeys"), and the rest ("Livers").  And Kress follows three
characters, one from each of the groups, to tell her story, which is a
story of the widening distance between the haves and the have-nots.
And lest you think this merely a problem of some maybe future, Kress
makes sure you see it in current terms as well: "... the United States
had always seemed to me like some powerful innocent beast, lushly
beautiful, with the cranial capacity of a narrow-headed deer.  Look how
it stretches its sleek muscles in the sunlight.  Looks how it bounds
high.  Look how it runs gracefully straight into the path of the
oncoming train."

     Not surprisingly, Kress's future has its own set of oncoming
trains that people are running straight into.  The donkeys stay in
power by paying taxes back to the livers, in the form of goods and
services.  And of course, this system is not stable, and we see the
inevitable break-down unfold, as well as attempts by the Sleepless to
introduce new scientific marvels, which may save mankind--or destroy
it.

     If Kress's sociology is right on target, her biology is less
convincing--at least to me.  Kress makes her characters confront the
consequences of their actions, but while I found the basic idea of the
central scientific development believable, how it used is less
believable, and results in an ending that is on the one hand not
completely convincing and on the other not a final ending.  I would not
be surprised to see another book next year (BEGGARS WOULD RIDE,
maybe?).

     BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS is not a perfect novel, and the ending is
somewhat disappointing, but overall I would still recommend it.

%A   Kress, Nancy 
%T   Beggars and Choosers
%I   Tor
%C   New York
%D   November 1994
%G   ISBN 0-312-85749-7
%P   316pp
%O   hardcover, $22.95
%S   Beggars
%V   2

--
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
There's always an easy solution to every human problem -
neat, plausible, and wrong. -- H.L. Mencken