The High-Rise Diver

I think this was a well written book and a really good translation. There were obvious similarities to Brave New World but it was different enough to tell an accompanying story about the pursuit of perfection.

The that gets me about this book, now that I've finished it, is the fact that it was never about the High Rise Diver at all.
I think I had been focusing on Riva, looking for how her story would play out, thinking she was the protagonist but she wasn't. It was Hitomi who was the protagonist and her observation of Riva was more so about her own story. It was about how she responded to Riva, how she reacted to her job and her own personal history in relation to Riva's that was the point of the novel. Atleast, I think so.
Riva was a strange character. There were no revelations from her directly. We hardly ever get to see what she really thinks and feels, her whole life is simply shown as everyone else's perception of her and that must amount to a great deal of distortion.

This dystopian novel was so believable that every part of their lives seemed to be believable. Although I didn't really warm to the characters, perhaps this was intentional. The novel was still enjoyable in spite of this.

I thought the author did an excellent job of showing just how far we are willing to go to save ourselves, and how desperate we can become to avoid adversity. This was a story that really made me think about what it is to protect ourselves, and how far we can be pushed before we rebel.

The High-Rise Diver hooked me in from the very beginning!

Hitomi is a psychiatrist assigned to help Riva, a high-rise diver who has suddenly given up diving and shows very little motivation to even live. Despite her best efforts, Hitomi struggles to figure out what went wrong with Riva and how to ultimately help her want to dive again. But Hitomi needs to show results soon, failure is not an option - or else both her and Riva will pay the price.

This book was fascinating. It is based in a world where everything you do is closely monitored, and your success and contribution to society are everything. I could truly feel the stress and pressure Hitomi was under, and could not wait to see how things would turn out. However, I wish we were given a little more incite into Riva and what she was inwardly going through. But overall, this book was very interesting read!

A well written dystopian novel.A world in which success is the goal your value.A touch of Brave new world.I was drawn right in and kept me turning the pages.A haunting novel that leaves you with a lot to think about.#netgalley#worldeditions

This is aa elegant and harrowing story of a dystopian world in which career success is all--quite literally--and in which quitting a job, dealing with burnout, or wanting a different life than what has been prescribed for you is unthinkable. Your job performance determines where you live, who you can date, what you eat, and more. This sounds like it's heavy-handed, but it never is: Lucadou deftly creates a world with delicate strands of information and description, weaving a complex, shimmering picture of a terrifying world.

Interesting, intelligent and thought-provoking. The story is set in the dystopian future where "performance" defines your living standards. If you meet the defined scale of performance you live in ultra modern high-rises in the city, the higher your floor, the higher your caste. Everyone else lives in the outer-slums, presumably in shame. Riva is a star and top athlete, a "high-rise diver, living the "high" life, until she suddenly wants to give it all up. But there are too many others - her manager, her sponsor, her boyfriend - who rely on her talent to elevate themselves. They will not let her withdraw. Hitomi is the psychologist tasked with reversing her decision, and is given complete invasive access to Riva's life in order to fix this mystery. Hitomi's success is linked to her own lifestyle and she is acutely aware of the risk of failure. So much so that it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy and she must correct her course at any cost.

While the author creates a realistic futuristic society, it is just the backdrop. The pressure and anxiety to perform, deliver and conform, within some subjective definition, is all too familiar in today's world. Individuality is only welcome if it falls within the societal definition. The slippery slope of self-destruction is well captured and the inevitability of failure is an excruciating to read. You find yourself taking the journey alongside Hitomi and willing her good fortune. Her story mirrors the journey of the high-rise diver, plummeting towards to earth, as elegantly as possible, with no knowledge whether she can pull up at the last minute or fatally crash. Excellent social commentary and capturing of the psychology of demise. My only wish is that a different ending was chosen.