It’s only a matter of time before we see Lily and Sam coming to a streaming service near you, so you may as well read “The Compound” now.
I just hope they stick to the storyline and not actually …. no, they wouldn’t make this an actual reality show, right?
Both highly entertaining and horrifying, Aisling Rawle’s dark satire on a Love Island-esque competition reality show highlights both the lengths television producers will go to elicit desired responses from contestants and the amount of psychological torture and physical pain people are willing to endure for the fleeting, at best, gift of fame.
Our protagonist, Lily, is in her era as a contestant on this show, set in a compound of sorts alongside a desertscape that appears to be on fire from time to time. When she awakens to her new world, having been drugged and plopped on a bed, she strolls the complex looking for other contestants.
Over the course of a couple chapters we are introduced to the 10 women and 9 men who are competing to be the last person living on the compound. (Why nine men, you ask? So did they.)
Contestants win both communal gifts for the compound — some of which make immediate sense and others with value that is revealed later on — and personal tasks that must be performed without public announcement of said task in order to receive personal gifts ranging from toothpaste to diamond earrings. (This in itself would make for an interesting book club debate. For example, I’m probably not going to shit on a sidewalk for diamond earrings. But if it had been a week since I brushed my teeth properly with toothpaste and a toothbrush … maybe? I don’t know. Not gonna find out. I like my reality TV as a fan, not participant, thank you very much.)
So who stays and who goes? Only the disembodied voice coming through a speaker or the LED screen knows — producers occasionally ask for someone to be banished by vote, and other times it is left to who is the last one without a partner in their bed at night. Hence the impetus to match up with a romantic interest as early as possible.
For just under 300 pages, Rawle packs a wallop with her storytelling, which includes themes of familial dysfunction, narcissism, escapism and disassociation. Lily’s got plenty to run away from that makes a compound life seem like a fantasy, and it’s also great fodder for a book club debate on whether her life is better on the inside than out.
Then there’s the cast of characters she’s force to live with — nice girls, conniving girls, pretty girls, bookish girls — all the cliche stereotypes we’ve created with reality TV. And the guys, woo boy — pretty guys, athletic guys, psycho meathhead types, cute dorks, cute assholes … they run the gamut.
In the end, Lily is forced to confront the real reasons she’s living on the compound, just like the others there with her. And all while reconciling that what was one of her favorite “reality” shows to watch does in fact feel very, very real when producers control the water lines. Yikes. Yeah, it gets dark. And pieces of the story suddenly make sense. Good stuff.
“The Compound” is a fast, engaging summer read well worth a trip to the pool, the beach or the backyard. Somebody else read it so we can debate who is getting cast in the streaming series.
LitzyDitz 