Kerry Drewery, Cell 7, Hotkey Books/Allen & Unwin, Oct 2016, 400pp., $19.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781471405594
Reality TV pervades our viewing screens – whether it’s baking shows or Toddlers in Tiaras, they’ve become a staple on our screens. Cell 7 takes it one step further: what if death was the ultimate form of reality TV? At the moment, everything is a commodity that can be shown on TV after all – even people watching TV. Gogglebox anyone?
Martha Honeydew lives in the Rises, the poorest part of town. She’s the type of girl no one would pay attention to, especially as she comes from the part of town people would like to pretend didn’t exist. But, when she confesses to Jackson Paige’s murder, she is suddenly thrust into the limelight of Death is Justice, a show where, over the course of seven days, people call in to vote for her life or death.
It’s cold, confronting stuff, and the author handles it with sensitivity, never pulling her punches and always making it clear that Martha is innocent, that she’s willing to stand up (and die) for what’s right in order to bring light to an injustice in the world. She’s aided by Eve, her prison counsellor, Isaac and assortment of other characters on the outside, all set against this type of bloodthirsty justice.
The story starts well enough, thrusting readers into the case and Day 1 of Martha’s incarceration for killing Jackson Paige, a beloved social justice warrior/actor with heaps of fans. Martha is incarcerated in Cell 1 and so the author begins to reveal that Paige was anything but the beloved persona presented to the world – an ideal comparison for our celebrity obsessed world. Martha begins seeing Eve, a prison counsellor who slowly becomes her confidant, working for her outside the walls to make her plan for day 7/Cell 7 and her execution come to fruition.
Set over a span of seven days, the book starts with a bang with Martha’s confession, before her part of the narrative slows down and becomes awfully frustrating. She is by far the most interesting part of this story, but locked away in her cell, we are only privy to what happened through flashbacks in every chapter about her.
Eve and Martha’s allies outside the prison travel the opposite path: they start slow, and the pacing in the chapters about them speeds up considerably as her execution looms. It makes sense in a way, I guess, but Martha was the key to this story for me, and as the book progressed I grew more disappointed with her chapters. The pacing needed to be better.
An interesting addition was a look at the show Death is Justice, at the hosts calling for votes, going over every titillating detail they could manage, and making up details in some cases, in order to get viewers to vote for Martha’s death. It’s frightening, and in a way, don’t we already do that for our X-factor type shows? There’s so much that’s familiar in this book in terms of reality TV – quite shocking when you remember how the book is using it.
The conclusion, I admit, did have me on the edge of my seat for a chapter or two, but it was too little too late. This is a confronting look at our society, with elements that take it to the extreme. But the familiar parts of it are what will make the story resonate with readers in the end.
Reviewed by Verushka Byrow
