Escaping Eleven by Jerri Chisholm (review)

Chisholm, Jerri Escaping Eleven. Entangled, 2020 [384p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781682815014 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781682815021 $7.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8-12

It's been generations since an inhospitable climate forced humans underground, and sixteen-year-old Eve has only ever known the cement walls of the underground bunker Compound Eleven and its brutal class hierarchy. Since she's a Lower Mean, much of her life has been about violence and survival, but Eve refuses to be broken by the higher ups and plans to escape, even if it means risking her life by going above ground to travel to another compound. Things get complicated, however, when she meets and falls for Wren, an upper class Preme and the son of one of the Compound's most vicious leaders; as unrest begins to ripple through the Compound, Eve knows she has to go, but now she realizes she may have a reason to stay. Chisholm paints a bleak picture of humanity, with echoes of Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer in the Compound's segregation of classes by floor and its unsettling, mournful references to the loss of the natural world. Eve is a practical girl, so her desire to flee to the deadly surface of the Earth feels uncharacteristic, but the desperation out of which it is born is keenly felt, especially after the revelation that her three-year-old brother was expelled aboveground in response to the family's violation of the one-child per family rule. The romance between Eve and Wren is a glimmer of light, but it's a small bright spot in a sea of darkness; fortunately, a more optimistic note brings the book to a close and may give some hope to readers concerned with the current climate crisis.