-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:From the critically-acclaimed author of the international bestseller VOX comes a suspenseful new novel that examines a disturbing near future where harsh realities follow from unreachable standards.
It's impossible to know what you will do…
Every child's potential is regularly determined by a standardized measurement: their quotient (Q). Score high enough, and attend a top tier school with a golden future. Score too low, and it's off to a federal boarding school with limited prospects afterwards. The purpose? An improved society where education costs drop, teachers focus on the more promising students, and parents are happy.
When your child is taken from you.
Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state's elite schools. When her nine-year-old daughter bombs a monthly test and her Q score drops to a disastrously low level, she is immediately forced to leave her top school for a federal institution hundreds of miles away. As a teacher, Elena thought she understood the tiered educational system, but as a mother whose child is now gone, Elena's perspective is changed forever. She just wants her daughter back.
And she will do the unthinkable to make it happen.
Christina Dalcher's Master Class shows America sleepwalking into a perfectionist eventuality not dissimilar to the one in Aldous Huxley's dystopian classic Brave New World. The story of Elena's journey confidently functions as both an assured dystopian thriller and a meticulously constructed socio-political cautionary tale. Fans of The Handmaid's Tale, and of dystopian fiction generally, will find much to please them in this impressive story of self-determination under pressure to conform...continued
Full Review
(679 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Mark Anthony Ayling).
The socio-political climate of Christina Dalcher's Master Class mirrors, to an extent, that of Germany during its early years under the influence of the Nazi Party. Dalcher draws overt comparisons between the educational proclivities of the Nazis and those of the book's fictional state, which seeks to establish intellectual, political and social conformity through the manipulation of young people. Early in the novel, Elena's grandmother confesses that she was once a member of the League of German Girls, the female wing of the Hitler Youth. She recounts how during this period "School became very different…Girls who used to skip the rope and play other games together began to separate." Given the marked similarities between the ...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Master Class, try these:
by Carole Stivers
Published 2021
What it means to be human-–and a mother-–is put to the test in Carole Stivers' debut novel set in a world that is more chilling and precarious than ever.
by Gish Jen
Published 2021
The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet: one part artificial intelligence, one part surveillance technology, and oddly human--even funny. The people: Divided.
.gif)
Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think the university stifles writers...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Michael D'Antonio, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The State Boys Rebellion
Christina Dalcher's Master Class conjures an America informed by tragic elements of its past and present where science and humanity are both abused in ways that are all-too familiar and plausible. Her heroic women and tough yet elegant prose suggest Margaret Atwood updated for this moment. Master Class will confirm your fears and affirm your hope
