Suicide Club

One word review: Faultless

Rambling review: Suicide Club is already my favourite read of 2018. Hands down.

Dystopic novels are my favourite genre and artificial intelligence is common conversation topic at our house, so this was always going to be up my street. That’s a double edged sword though, as it also means I had very high expectations for this book. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. Heng addresses the prospect of immortality through AI so deftly that it blew me away.

Whilst I am desperate to talk about this book to someone (the carrot? DiamondSkin? The checkout til displays?!), I don’t want to talk about this story in any depth. For books I really, really love, I struggle to articulate their sheer brilliance and I don’t want to do Heng any disservice. Also, clearly I am very exuberant about the book and I wouldn’t want that to taint any prospective readers. But honestly, this book is sheer brilliance and written in a highly engaging, readable style.

Pre-order this book, buy this book, read this book, borrow this book – you won’t regret it.

P.S. The author is delightful and is super friendly on social media platforms, which is the cherry on this cake!

Star rating: Five stars!

Year published: 2018

Publishing house: Sceptre Books

Amazon Summary: In a near-future world, medical technology has progressed far enough that immortality is now within grasp – but only to those who show themselves to be deserving of it. These people are the lifers: the exercisers, yogacisers, green juicers and early nighters.

Genetically perfect, healthy and wholesome, one hundred-year-old Lea is the poster girl for lifers, until the day she catches a glimpse of her father in the street, eighty-eight years after their last encounter. While pursuing him, Lea has a brush with death which sparks suspicions. If Lea could be so careless, is she worthy of immortality?

Suicide Club wasn’t always an activist group. It began as a set of disillusioned lifers, gathering to indulge in forbidden activities: performances of live music, artery-clogging meals, irresponsible orgies. But now they have been branded terrorists and are hunted by the state.

In a future where your class, prospects and life expectancy are all known from birth, a group of people are turning their back on extending their natural lives. Instead of taking advantage of the technology that offers them a lifespan of over a hundred years, these people are seizing control of their lives the only way they know how, by ending them.

Lea was content with her life, with a high-powered job, a younger man on her arm and a future as a 'lifer.' She had more than most could dream of. Lifers are the privileged ones, the upper class who are allowed access to the body upgrades and modifications that will keep them alive for hundreds of years.

Everything changes for Lea when she sees her father on a crowded street. Not unusual for many but Lea's father left her and her mother decades earlier, hiding from the consequences of a violent crime. She goes against her instincts and calls out, following after him, straight into oncoming traffic. This small act of carelessness gets her noticed, and before she knows it she is being questioned as if she was attempting suicide.

In a future where living as long as possible is seen as the only sane option, suicide is an act of defiance. Lea is questioned and assessed for mental stability. She is suspected of being a member of the terrorist group The Suicide Club, a collective who indulge in unhealthy foods, music, orgies and even film their members commit suicide. She needs to prove herself fit and worthy of the treatments that will allow her to continue as a lifer.

When she sees her father again and comes to understand why he has returned to the city, the realisation forces her to look back on his departure and why he found it so necessary to leave in the first place. Scared of losing him again, she follows him into the heart of The Suicide Club.

It barely took me a handful of pages to fall in love with Suicide Club. Why? Because Rachel Heng has managed to create a world I want to know everything about. It's dark in it's clinical, utilitarian governance yet so easy to imagine that it draws you in completely. It's refreshing to read a novel picturing the 'perfect' society gone too far. We're all too used to filthy streets, toxic rain and prostitutes on every corner in sci-fi (it's a pet hate of mine) but this angle opens up the genre into something I found really exciting.

Lea is the perfect conduit from the overly health-conscious society to the underground world of The Suicide Club. She's followed the herd in her lifer role but she's smart and curious enough to wonder why and how people can live any differently. Her father broadened her horizons as a child and he does the same when she's an adult.

Suicide Club is an incredible novel that I can easily see being a bestseller of 2018. With it being based in such a fascinating setting I would be incredibly surprised if it isn't picked up for a film or tv adaptation. Pre-order this one now because it's fun, fast and leaves you thinking. I'm keeping my fingers crossed tightly that there more to come from the world Rachel Heng's created.

#SuicideClub is a gripping debut for fans of Margaret Atwood, Emily St John Mandel & George Saunders.

If you like your near-future dystopias compelling and poignant, with clear philosophical underpinnings which question the way we live now, then get ready to join the Suicide Club. A tale of two loving daughters coming to terms with their parents’ mortality - or lack thereof.

The action unfolds in a New York City that is still recognisable (nary a jet pack or flying car in sight) but where the population is divided into bio-enhanced ‘Lifers’ and those who are deemed Sub 100s - i.e. unlikely to live more than a mere hundred years. In a world where the state devotes so much time and money keeping its enhanced Lifers alive, euthanasia and suicide are not just highly illegal, but a complete moral anathema.

For some, like Lea (a young woman of 130), this makes complete sense. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to live forever? For more than a century, Lea’s had her eyes-on-prize of join the Third Wave and become one of the first true Immortals. It’s the pinnacle of everything she’s ever strived for in two lifetimes of relentless over-achieving. Now, just as she is poised to see it all through, something happens. This ‘something’ is the sort of tiny, inconsequential event which the likes of you and I might walk away from without looking back. But for Lea, it could well mean the difference between eternity and mortality.

As a result of this, Lea’s path crosses with Anja, another Lifer, locked in her own struggle with immortality. What to do with an elderly mother whose enhanced body has all but given out? No longer alive, in the sense that you or I would recognise, and yet with a heart that has been specifically designed to keep on ticking. So, what if you are going to live forever, but simply don’t want to? That’s when, you join the Club and, perversely, work for death in the name of love.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about the dystopic elements of Suicide Club was the strangest things were little more than the logical extension of our how current obsessions with youth and health are being taken to almost religious extremes in some quarters. In doing so, Ms Heng makes us ask ourselves, what price immortality?

Having said this, what I love most about this novel are the characters and the poignancy of their situations and dilemmas, and the sheer beauty of the prose. The ending was particularly beautiful, but I didn’t want it to happen. I would happily have kept reading the same amount again and cannot wait to see what Rachel Heng does next.

It won’t surprise me in slightest if this ends up being a major Netflix series. Hopefully in my Lifetime.


I am grateful to the publisher for letting me see an advance copy of Suicide Club.

Suicide Club by Rachel Heng a thought provoking five-star read. This has been one of the hardest reviews I have ever written, It’s taken me weeks and many, many deleted words to get these final words on the page and I still don’t know if I have gotten what I want to get across. I loved the title and description of this book and the whole concept. That wasn’t what I got, I got so much more, but there was something lacking, but overall I desperately wanted to give it five-stars as the part that was lacking was just the way plot developed at times it was a little stilted but the flow through the whole book was well done. This story is one that is filled with beauty and passion and makes you take a good hard look at how the world we live in at present in one that takes beauty and popularity as a currency held above many others. This book isn’t what you may expect, and some of the flash backs gets a little confusing but keep with it as in the end you will love it.

Thank you to Netalley for my advanced copy

Set in the future, the population is declining. To combat this people are encouraged to be super healthy. Those lucky enough to do this become lifers and live to be over 100. But there are also the sub 100s, the second class citizens.
The story follows two female characters, Anja a classical violinist whose mother is dying and Lea, a lifer. Two different women with very different lives and how those lives become intertwined.
I didn't think a dystopian/sci-fi/urban-fantasy novel could be beautiful but the writing in this is. It was like an episode of Black Mirror and it definitely leaves you wondering what the future could bring.

I loved the concept behind this book. In the future, the population is falling. To try to keep it up, people are strongly encouraged to be super healthy and get various body enhancements and replacements. As a result, some people live to be over 100. Then there are the others - the sub-100s - who are the second-class citizens, who live and die like the mortals they are.

The storyline is also really interesting. Lea is a lifer, and she tries so hard to be perfect. She has a great job, a fiancee, and she does everything according to the government-issued directives. But one day she sees a face from her past in the crowd, and her life crashes down around her. The plot follows her as she tries to make
everything perfect again.

The characters are quite hard to get to know, as they are not quite human, with their enhancements and the strange lifestyles they have. You do however get to know the main characters, Lea and Anja, quite well as the story progresses. Their past experiences have made them who they are and these are revealed gradually. However I wouldn't say that I could understand any of the characters, and nor do I like them. This detachment didn't ruin the book for me though, it was very much concept-driven rather than character-based, and I felt like the aloofness of the characters fit perfectly. This is how everyone is in this world because everything is so clinical and nobody would dare to reveal their true selves and risk the disapproval of others.

The pace is pretty slow, and this is not a tense or exciting book. It is full of intrigue however, and I never lost interest. I couldn't predict what would happen, which I really liked.

Overall I really enjoyed this book in a low-key sort of way. It is well written and the ideas are great. On the down side, I don't think I will remember it, just because there was no excitement. On the up side, it wasn't what I thought it was going to be from reading the description, and this turned out to be a very good thing.

Great book. I felt it covered all the elements of a potential immortality. I loved the way Lea changed throughout the book and the struggle with her decisions. I found it making me think about this and look at what I would want to do given the situations of the characters. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone.

All the buzz around this book is completely justified! Exploring a nightmarish world where a select few achieve immortality, it really makes you think, about everything from our 'wellness' culture to the value of life itself. I heartily recommend it: a great read based on a truly unique idea!

In this near future dystopian novel we see society coming close to living forever, if you have the right genes that is. Children are tested at birth to see if they are eligible for the new treatments that will enable them to live longer. The ‘Lifers’ must follow strict rules and keep their bodies in good shape, their meals are prepared for them, exercise is controlled, no stress or even having the windows open!

Lea Kirino is a lifer as was her mother before her. She does everything she is supposed to do and has just turned 100 years old. She has a great job and is due for a promotion and hopefully the next wave of treatment that could mean she will be immortal. But one day she sees her dad in the street who she hasn’t seen in 88 years and tries to follow him, she steps in to the road, in a place your not supposed to and gets hit by a car. When she wakes up she’s told she’s on the observation list. The observation list is a list of people seen as antisanct, those who don’t wish to live forever. This is a crime and anyone seen as though they don’t value their life is then on this list.
To Lea this is the worst thing possible and she does everything to put it right, but with her dad back. Lea begins to see a whole new world, of powerful people part of the antisanct movement called the Suicide Club, her dad wanting to end his life with them and so Lea is pulled between the two worlds. Will she discover what she truly desires from life? Is living forever all its cracked up to be?

I enjoyed this story, it has good world building. It felt like this world could become a possibility in our future. I enjoyed the characters and what they brought to the story, the secondary characters help build Lea’s story and helped to paint the picture of the world they live in and what its like for ‘Lifers’ and “sub-100” who don’t have the genes for immortality.
We had Lea’s whole back story and so we had the whole picture and we could watch Lea evolve. I felt like I was on the journey with her and felt what she felt.
The writing was so immersive, I was drawn into this world and how it works, I couldn’t put it down.

A great book and a must read this summer!