Like a lot of people living outside the U.S., I got to know about Stacey Abrams during the dramatic 2020 elections. She's a political powerhouse; she’s a former member and minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, and as an advocate for voting rights addressing voter suppression, she was influential in boosting voter turnout in Georgia during the 2020 elections. In addition to her amazing resume, turns out she's also a pretty awesome writer! I'm not even kidding, this book got me glued to my phone in the middle of one of the worst reading slumps I've had in a long time. I actually finished it in less than a day. Maybe political thrillers are just my thing, or maybe Ms. Abrams has that secret sauce that keeps pages turning.
Just like a chess game, which is a constant motif in the story, the premise is a bit complex. Here's the blurb from Goodreads: Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together--excelling in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family. When the shocking news breaks that Justice Wynn--the cantankerous swing vote on many current high-profile cases--has slipped into a coma, Avery's life turns upside down. She is immediately notified that Justice Wynn has left instructions for her to serve as his legal guardian and power of attorney. Plunged into an explosive role she never anticipated, Avery finds that Justice Wynn had been secretly researching one of the most controversial cases before the court--a proposed merger between an American biotech company and an Indian genetics firm, which promises to unleash breathtaking results in the medical field. She also discovers that Wynn suspected a dangerously related conspiracy that infiltrates the highest power corridors of Washington. As political wrangling ensues in Washington to potentially replace the ailing judge whose life and survival Avery controls, she begins to unravel a carefully constructed, chesslike sequence of clues left behind by Wynn. She comes to see that Wynn had a much more personal stake in the controversial case and realizes his complex puzzle will lead her directly into harm's way in order to find the truth.
What Abrams manages to accomplish with this novel is nothing short of stunning. It's fast-paced, thrilling, and full of suspense. While the writing is verbose and the characters, especially Avery, made some questionably naïve decisions that left me saying, "Couldn't be me though!", none of that took away my enjoyment of this book. I also liked the chess motif and how it wove itself in the story. It really gave Queen's Gambit vibes, and I loved that show. Maybe I need to learn how to play chess?
Anyway, a lot of the themes that Abrams examines in her novel are thought-provoking. I believe that patriotism has its place. In its purest form, patriotism is a love and devotion to home and country, a sense of attachment and belonging to the land of one's birth and/or habitation. It's what makes a nation's citizens seek the best for their country and keep in line with its truest values and ideals. However, and as this novel also shows, I think that the values in question can be faulty, and even worse, what constitutes as patriotism often boils down to an individual's interpretation of those values, which is obviously subjective. Furthermore patriotism often degenerates into nationalism and even ethnocentrism, and there can be deadly consequences for those who aren't seen to fall in line or don't necessarily agree with those values or their interpretations.
I like what George Orwell has to say about the difference between patriotism and nationalism, because I believe it describes so perfectly the brand of "patriotism" that Abrams' work disavows:
“By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”¹
Reading this novel, I can see why the idea of patriotism, especially the American flavor of it, tends to leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth. As always, a thirst for power ruins everything that can possibly be good, and it does that so insidiously.
The genetic angle is also fascinating to me, especially as a life science major with a once-held interest in becoming a researcher. We've come a long way from Watson and Crick's (and their antecedents) discovery of the double helix, and there's many more milestones yet to be reached as science marches forward. I like that Abrams doesn't shy away from the understanding that scientific discovery and progress is a double-edged sword. In the right hands, motivated by goodwill, it can be a force for good, a changer of lives. In the wrong hands, motivated by capitalist greed (or perhaps even wrong notions of patriotism?), it becomes deadly and destructive.
With the massive strides we've seen in the fields of biology and genetics, biological weaponry like what is explored in this novel is no longer a thing of science fiction or fringe conspiracy. Ethics and human decency must continue to prevail in scientific discovery if we are to prevent chaos, especially when that chaos is politically-motivated. Reading this book and imagining the real-life implications of some of these concepts made me shudder.
That's all I have to say for now on While Justice Sleeps; here’s the Goodreads link if you want to check it out: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55671327-while-justice-sleeps. I tried the book review thing for a bit, but I think I want to return to the main reason why I started this blog, which is to talk about the interesting themes and other narrative elements that stand out to me in the books I read. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for what I read next!
1. Orwell, G., & Carey, J. (2002). Essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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