{"id":26771,"date":"2017-11-17T03:46:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T11:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=26771"},"modified":"2017-11-15T09:58:31","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T17:58:31","slug":"the-gift-of-innocence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/11\/17\/the-gift-of-innocence\/","title":{"rendered":"The gift of innocence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Innocence Treatment<\/em><\/strong> by Ari Goelman is a psychological thriller set in 2031 America.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Looking for a smart, tense, psychological thriller for your teenage reader? Ari Goelman\u2019s The Innocence Treatment<\/em> (Roaring Brook Press, 2017) would fit the bill. Though, if you\u2019re unsure, you can ask the author himself. Goelman will be doing a reading and book-signing on Nov. 21, 7 p.m., at Book Warehouse on Main Street. He will also be at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Nov. 27, 6:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

Goelman is originally from Philadelphia. \u201cI moved around the U.S. a bunch before ending up in Vancouver, living mostly in New York City and Boston before I came here,\u201d he told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cI came to Vancouver gradually, a few months here (1995), a few years here (1997-1999), until finally settling here in 2006. I wanted to make sure I waited until I definitely couldn\u2019t<\/em> afford to buy a house in the city. As for why, I had family in Vancouver, so, when I was looking into grad schools, I knew it was a fun (and back then) affordable place to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Innocence Treatment <\/em>is Goelman\u2019s second book. His first, The Path of Names<\/em>, for middle-grade readers, received many literary awards and nominations. He also writes short stories and is on the faculty of Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His undergraduate degree in economics is from New College of Florida, he has an MSc in planning from University of British Columbia and a PhD in urban studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Ari Goelman (photo by John Goldsmith Photography)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOne of the first bits of paid writing I ever did was for this very newspaper, when I first came to Vancouver in 1995,\u201d he shared. \u201cTrue story. A once-off article about Kidsbooks.\u201d True, indeed. The story, \u201cNo kidding around,\u201d was published on Sept. 29, 1995, in the Jewish Western Bulletin<\/em>, the Independent<\/em>\u2019s predecessor. But back to the present \u2026 well, the future.<\/p>\n

Goelman sets The Innocence Treatment<\/em> in his home country in 2031, when \u201cthe United States was still enjoying the lull between the first and second uprisings. A drought was drying out the last of the great western forests, but it would be another two years before the massive wildfires that left millions homeless and sparked the second uprising.\u201d<\/p>\n

His main character, 16-year-old Lauren was once so innocent that she had to be watched at all times so that no harm would come to her. At first, she is \u201csuper-excited\u201d to be undergoing a medical procedure to \u201cfix\u201d her, because then she \u201cwon\u2019t be stupid anymore.\u201d But, afterward, she discovers that understanding people and their motivations doesn\u2019t necessarily lead to happier or better outcomes and, more than once, the \u201cnew\u201d Lauren must use her ample self-defence skills and literally kick some butts.<\/p>\n

\u201cLauren\u2019s kick-ass qualities naturally emerged from her character,\u201d said Goelman about his strong female lead. \u201cI started with the idea of a character who had spent her whole life very naive and very protected, and I imagined she\u2019d be furious once the veil was lifted and she started to experience the world as it really was. I figured, as well, that after spending her whole life being unavoidably passive, she would be thrilled by her new ability to act and would make the most of those abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem becomes one of self-restraint, which Goelman explicitly explores in a chapter involving an experiment while Lauren is in custody, which I personally found somewhat out of place, or forced.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I was trying to do in that chapter was to show Lauren\u2019s inability to control herself, even when she genuinely wants to, both for her own self-interest and to spite Dr. Corbin,\u201d explained Goelman. \u201cThat\u2019s what Corbin is really measuring \u2013 not Lauren\u2019s fighting ability, but her paranoia and anger. It was a fun chapter to write, because it\u2019s from Lauren\u2019s perspective and she\u2019s aware of the challenge that she\u2019s failing, even as she fails it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, The Innocence Treatment<\/em> is a fun book to read. To use an apt clich\u00e9, it is a page-turner. It is also a little scary in its seeming prescience, having been written before the election of Donald Trump and the apparent descent of America.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, The Innocence Treatment<\/em> does feel a bit unfortunately prescient at this point,\u201d agreed Goelman. \u201cI\u2019m glad it was published this year, or it would have started seeming less like a near future world and more like the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for what he thinks the future might hold in reality, Goelman said, \u201cI think the most we can hope for is to slow climate change and deal with its consequences in a fair way that limits human suffering. I\u2019m not real optimistic about our near-term prospects, as I think that nothing good will happen as long as so much of the world\u2019s resources are controlled by so few individuals and families.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world of The Innocence Treatment<\/em> is very much formed by the combination of climate change disaster and the unequal distribution of wealth. And,\u201d said Goelman, \u201cwhile the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. is the latest and maybe the best example of how these two trends come together, we don\u2019t have to look so far from home. The B.C. Liberals ran this province for 16 years, defunding public education and subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, at the behest of their very wealthy (and largely unregulated) donors.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the upside,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s not like the solutions are so complicated \u2013 if we get money out of politics, I believe humans can be really brilliant at solving problems collaboratively. So, while I\u2019m pretty pessimistic about any major improvement in the near term, I think it\u2019s very possible to change things for the better \u2013 it just requires the political will. There\u2019s a part of The Innocence Treatment<\/em> where Lauren\u2019s older sister describes the family\u2019s life right after the \u2018Emergency\u2019 era permanently reshaped the U.S., and one of the things she remembers is it wasn\u2019t so bad being without power, as people came together to help each other. I think there\u2019s a lot of truth to that. Given the chance, humans are really good at working together. They\u2019re also really good at struggling for dominance and to monopolize scarce resources. It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess which direction we\u2019re going.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the full schedule of the Jewish Book Festival, which runs Nov. 25-30, visit jewishbookfestival.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Innocence Treatment by Ari Goelman is a psychological thriller set in 2031 America.\u00a0 Looking for a smart, tense, psychological thriller for your teenage reader? Ari Goelman\u2019s The Innocence Treatment (Roaring Brook Press, 2017) would fit the bill. Though, if you\u2019re unsure, you can ask the author himself. Goelman will be doing a reading and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[7598,7597,72,5080,3034,3753],"class_list":["post-26771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-ari-goelman","tag-dystopia","tag-jewish-book-festival","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-youth"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}