OPINION | BOOK REVIEW: DELIRIUM
BOOK REVIEW: DELIRIUM By Allegra Di Florio '27
“It's been sixty four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty three since the scientists perfected a cure.” This is the opening line of the book Delirium. Delirium was written by Lauren Oliver in 2011 and is the first book in a trilogy. Not only has Delirium been translated into around 30 different languages, but it is also a New York Times bestseller. The book is a fast paced mix of fantasy, dystopia, and romance and as said by The New York Journal of Books, “Oliver’s deeply emotional and incredibly well honed prose commands the reader's attention and captures their hearts.”
“It's been sixty four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty three since the scientists perfected a cure.” Lauren Oliver is an American author, known for writing several young adult books such as Replica, Vanishing Girls, Panic, the Delirium trilogy, and Before I Fall, which later became a major motion picture. Before I Fall was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, and was released by Open Road Films in the same year. Oliver was born in Queens, New York and currently lives in Brooklyn. She went to New York University and got her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing there. Currently, Lauren Oliver is a narrative consultant for Illumination Entertainment where she writes TV shows and features for various production companies.
59 TUSKAN TIMES
Delirium is set in the future and begins with a bit of history about the United States, where many things have changed. The government has decided that love, or Amor Deliria Nervosa, is a disease and must be controlled and gotten rid of. So, on the citizen’s 18th birthday, they must receive ‘the cure’ to prevent them from having the disease (it is implied that ‘the cure’ is a brain surgery procedure done by the scientists of the government). The protagonist, Lena, is 17, and can’t wait to get ‘the cure’ because her mom killed herself 12 years prior after the cure didn’t work on her. However, one day she meets a boy, Alex, and soon falls in love with him. She discovers that he doesn’t live in the boundaries of the US; instead, he lives outside of the electric fence and is a part of a rebellion against the government and their ideals. He tells her that he and many other people faked the mark of the cure but stayed in society to cause small acts of rebellion. As Lena learns more about what ‘the cure’ really is and what actually happened to her mom, she begins to question everything that she’s been told.