The Olive Readers is a story set 200 years in the future where governments have broken down and corporations rule the world.
In particular, the Water Company have devised the means to manufacture water and in so doing hold the means to enslave the planet through its commoditization.
Communities of people have been uprooted and displaced purposely by the corporations to remote areas of the earth with no trace of their heritage.
At the beginning of the novel, Jephzat's family have been relocated to the Olve Country. A community whose sole purpose is to farm olives. The community's beliefs are governed by fear of the Water Company whose spies are everywhere. You see, technology has advanced so greatly that instead of religion, the people worship the water company, they revere their own systems of knowledge. It is ironic then that the water Company has destroyed all the books associated with earth's past. Communities live in ignorance of what it was like to be truly free. Yet in this small piece of Olive country is a secret space where shelves upon shelves of books are kept of the old world. Jephzat's introduction to this room is part of her destiny.
The Olive Readers is Jephzat''s journey from ignorance to knowledge.
In providing a criticism of this novel, I can say that the author used a number of plot devices that seemed irrelevent. First was that Jephzat speaks to the reader as if she were writing a memoir from the future to be read by us in the past. Yet technologically speaking she does not explain how that would be practically possible. Second, Hephzibah's is introduced as a pretty girl who does not fully understand or have an interest in politics yet suddenly in bookIII her ambitions cause her to become a Lady Macbeth type figure with an eye firmly on ruling the Water Company. Third, Homer's death was completely unnecessary and marked the point where the story began to collapse on itself. Homer is Jephzat's love interest and introduces her to the world of the olive readers. Consequently, her growth from a narrowminded puppet of the
corporation to a free thinking individual is marked by his relationship with her. After his death her character appears empty and lacking somewhat. Indeed, the scenes in which Jephzat steals the sphinx and reclaims the empire are contrived and too easily accomplished. The book begins well yet finishes rushed and leaves the reader dissapointed. Characters are introduced and all too quickly taken away by some plot device or other.