The Biggerers
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
Introducing a witty and unique voice poised to take the literary world by storm. For fans of The Borrowers, Munmun and The Truckers.
Everybody became a bit mean. A bit individual. Units. That's all humanity could say for itself – well, it couldn't actually, because it was made up of too many, um, units. And then there were the elderly, who could never bear to be so isolated, yet isolated they were. It was cruel, really it was. And kids – not that many people had them any more – they seemed to be born sitting in one of those egg-shaped chairs, only seeing what was right in front of them.
So, the government asked a doctor, that famous one, to get a team together and figure it all out. He did. Everyone got a playmate. Well, everyone who wanted one, could buy a playmate. About a foot tall, they stood, naked (except in winter), very affectionate, not too intelligent. Mute, but cute - exactly what every home needs. Something to love, little units of love.
The Biggerers is set in a dystopian future where our two heroes, Bonbon and Jinx, spend their days gathering stones and feathers for their basket, and waiting to be fed by their owners. But it’s not long before getting sick, falling in love and wondering why they can’t eat with a spoon pushes them to realise they are exactly the same as their owners…only smaller.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lilwall's ambitious and often undisciplined debut cleverly sets up a chilling near-future scenario: an unscrupulous scientist is cloning and manipulating embryos to produce miniature humans for a huge and greedy government-backed corporation that tortures them, drugs them with memory suppressants, and sells them as pets ostensibly to teach 22nd-century children to care lovingly about something other than themselves. "Littlers" Bonbon and Jinx gradually learn to communicate illicitly with the adult "biggerers" who "own" them, Susan and Hamish, relatively kind pet parents who eventually try to unmask this horrible business. Gruesome episodes involve Jinx's victimized littler beau, Chips, and poignant others show Isabel, a littler illegally raised in secret by Drew, a lab technician repulsed by his work. Using inventive but occasionally disjointed prose, Lilwall complicates the littlers' gradual awakening to their human ability to love with satiric reflections on inhumane attempts to halt overpopulation and an all-too-human love triangle among three biggerers. Science fiction fans will appreciate the unusual perspective of humans as seen through their pets' eyes, but may wish Lilwall had focused this dark comedy more clearly.
