There's something strange about people who know they're going to die soon. It's as if their senses are expanded to super-human dimensions, as if they acquire X-ray vision and become mind readers and can see into the future and suddenly understand everything that's going on inside and between other people. And either that really is the case, or else we just want to believe it is, because it makes dying more attractive and easier to reconcile ourselves with, somehow.

- from The Unit, by Ninni Holmqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy

I don't receive many advance copies of novels, so when I do, I kind of notice they're there; when the first sentence of the accompanying letter drops comparisons to 1984 and Never Let Me Go, I kind of go ahead and bump that book right up to the top of the reading queue, if out of nothing else but curiosity and convenience. Maybe I'm an easy sell. But in any case, such is the case with The Unit, due out in 2009 from Other Press, which I just finished, and which I found largely harrowing, and generally more intriguing by the end than I might have thought it would be closer to the beginning. A good read, one about which I'll have more to say, once I figure out how to put it all down.