The Limit, by Kristen Landon
Disclaimer: Do not pay for The Limit with a credit card. You'll just feel silly afterwards. The Limit was published in 2010, but a paperback edition just came out in December.
In the near future, America has instituted some strict new policies concerning family debt. If a family exceeds its debt limit, any children over 13 years old can be taken to a workhouse until their credit is restored. When this very thing happens to our protagonist, Matt, he discovers first-hand all the pitfalls and dangers of the system. Taken from his screaming family moments after their limit is breeched, he is whisked away by a mysterious woman who runs a workhouse for the government.
Matt is a smart kid, so he begins working on the “top floor,” where talented children perform all manner of computer-oriented tasks for the government or various clients. Their lives are actually quite cushy: private rooms, a pool, all the food they can eat, and the freedom to buy anything off the internet that they may want. The only restriction is that they are confined to the top floor, and for many, this restriction is pointless because they don’t want to leave.
Matt enjoys his life and work at first, despite not hearing from his family at all (his cell phone and email won’t operate properly…plot point!). But even as he begins to make friends, he starts to learn darker secrets about the workhouse, and he wonders if he’ll ever be able to go free.
Kristen Landon’s first middle-grade novel is refreshing on a couple of levels. First, there is zero paranormal activity and no zombie presence. Second, it discusses (albeit sketchily) a real-world problem: financial responsibility of individuals and families. Of course, since this is a “thriller,” those discussions are sandwiched between multiple action sequences and shocking plot revelations, and thus are not really resolved.
Matt’s fellow “top floor” prisoners display a full range of attitudes toward debt. One boy deliberately spends everything he earns on useless products so that his hated family remains in debt. On the other end of the spectrum, another girl nearly drives herself to exhaustion to be reunited with her family. Matt himself is conflicted, especially after he gets exposed his parents’ own juvenile attitudes toward money, which are what landed him in the workhouse in the first place.
These issues alone should be enough to fuel a novel, but Landon adds yet another element. Is the woman who runs the workhouse corrupt? Is she gaming the system to take advantage of child labor for fun and profit? (You get one guess.) As Matt and his friends work to reveal the truth, the stake grow higher. Matt’s sister is also sent to the workhouse, as his family continues to run into ever deeper debt. Even worse, many of the children inside the workhouse are getting violent headaches and seizures. People disappear. Matt has no idea who to trust.
The emphasis on the flashier elements of the plot obscure the perhaps more important idea of financial responsibility, which sort of drops out of the story. In the end, 13-year-old Matt resolves never to exceed his limit and to be in control of his own life. Great. But who doesn’t say that? Landon touches on some of the reasons for the various families’ debts (keeping up appearances, medical bills, etc…) but doesn’t address anything in depth, mostly because the childrens’ perspective limits their knowledge.
In the end all we know is that debt=bad. The evil in the story is reduced to the actions of a few rogue adults, and once they are neutralized, the protagonist is again loose in a world where the larger systemic issues are exactly the same as in the beginning. Sure, his parents make new promises and Matt has a few new lessons under his belt (as well as a touch—but only a touch—of cynicism). But I closed the book wondering if our hero hadn’t fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire. If Landon plans a sequel, maybe we’ll find out.