Q by Christina Dalcher

Q by Christina Dalcher.
Published 30th April 2020 by HQ.
Read May 2020.

To outside eyes, Elena Fairchild has the perfect life. She is a teacher at one of the elite silver schools, with a successful husband and two beautiful daughters – and in world where all are judged on perfection, her family are more fortunate than most.

Everything in this world is about your Q level (Quotient) and if you want a good life, then your Q must be as high as possible. All citizens undergo compulsory, routine testing to ensure they are where the government thinks they should be, especially when it comes to schooling - as it is vital for teachers to concentrate their efforts on the gifted students so they can realise their full potential. 

Those that don’t make the grade are now sent to the mysterious government boarding schools, but what really goes on behind the doors of these out of the way institutions?

When one of Elena’s own daughters fails her assessment and is sent away to a government school, their family life is turned upside-down. Elena knows she cannot leave her beautiful, but fragile daughter to this unknown fate, so she deliberately fails her own assessment in order to be sent to the same school.

What she discovers there is more terrifying than she could ever have imagined and she will do whatever it takes to save her daughter..... and make sure everyone knows about the government’s horrifying plans.

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I am always a sucker for a dystopian thriller, especially one set in a near future so realistic you can almost taste it, and this is one of the best I have read for quite some time. This is a proper page-turner - thrilling and chilling in equal measure - and one that is is impossible to put down once you have started.

It's difficult to talk too much about this one without giving away spoilers, but I will do my best. 

Suffice to say that Elena's life is not quite as perfect as we are first led to believe. She loves her daughters fiercely, but she has come to realise some things about her husband, Malcolm, that make her very uncomfortable - their marriage is on shaky grounds and she is struggling to see what even attracted her to him in the first place. Their eldest daughter, Anne, is a model student and thriving under the new educational system, which makes her the apple of her father's eye, but the youngest daughter, Freddie, suffers from crippling anxiety which leads her to struggle, especially at school. Elena finds herself constantly shielding Freddie from Malcolm's criticism and his distant coldness, which is such a stark contrast to the way he treats Anne.

When Freddie inevitably fails her school assessment and is sent off to one of the mysterious government schools, where her family are only able to visit her a couple of days a year, Elena knows Freddie will not survive on her own. She has to make the difficult decision to engineer things so that she can be with Freddie, whatever the cost, even of this means leaving Anne - and making herself vulnerable to Malcolm's retribution.

It is not until Elena gets to the remote Kansas school that Freddie has been sent to, that she comes to understand what these new government institutions are for. These are not just dumping grounds for less able students and those unable to keep up with the pressure to perform... they are the beginning of something quite terrifying instead... a social engineering experiment of the worst kind.

Elena harkens back to the stories of her own German grandmother and knows she must do whatever it takes to save not only her daughter, but all those now in danger from the government's horrifying plans, including questioning her own culpability in how events have turned out - and she learns a chilling lesson about the history of her own country along the way.

This is compelling and disturbing stuff - thrilling, edge of your seat writing with a valuable and timely message that will have you feeling the weight of your own responsibility in how events turn out, and the importance of remembering the dark deeds of history. There is a lot to take away from this one, all wrapped up in an excellent read that will shock you to the core. Q is a must read.

Q is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer in hardcover, ebook and audio formats, and will be available in paperback from January 2021.

From the cover of the book:

Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state’s new elite schools. Her daughters are exactly like her: beautiful, ambitious, and perfect. A good thing, since the recent mandate that’s swept the country is all about perfection.

Now everyone must undergo routine tests for their quotient, Q, and any children who don’t measure up are placed into new government schools. Instead, teachers can focus on the gifted.

Elena tells herself it’s not about eugenics, not really, but when one of her daughters scores lower than expected and is taken away, she intentionally fails her own test to go with her.

But what Elena discovers is far more terrifying than she ever imagined.

About the author:

Christina Dalcher is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Vox. She earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University, specializing in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects. She and her husband split their time between the American South and Naples, Italy. Q is her second novel.