Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation.
Smart and provocative ... So damn addictive ... The premise itself is the novel’s first achievement—the TV show is a wonderfully abhorrent and ethically dubious monstrosity, and a testament to Rawle’s imagination ... A fantastically and uncomfortably fun drama, one that is particularly enjoyable because of a profane truth: It’s entertaining to watch hot people do psychotic things ... The final third of the book in particular is a hair-raising suite of terrors.
With such a juicy conceit, it would be easy to view the novel as just an easy summer romp. But Rawle is up to something more thoughtful; The Compound joins a budding genre of fiction that uses disturbing televised competitions to critique our social norms, including Chain-Gang All-Stars and The Hunger Games. Where those books flash between competitors and their spectators to expose the brutality we’re willing to consume as entertainment—as well as the prison industrial complex, oppression, tyranny, fascism—The Compound takes a different approach: keeping us firmly ensconced in the story’s shambolic Eden. We get only glancing references to what lies beyond—contestants are prohibited from sharing details of their lives outside the show—and they all hint at some type of devastation ... With The Compound, Rawle has made working through these heavy questions both thrilling and haunting.
A masterful, captivating story of materialism and the search for meaning amidst climate crisis and economic instability ... With nuanced characters and a sharp examination of the tearing threads of modern society, The Compound is an astounding must-read.
Manna to fans of reality TV and some haters as well ... Lily’s self-awareness will dawn too gradually for some readers, and the story takes a while to gather steam, but Rawle ultimately balances a shrewd indictment of reality TV’s contrived survivalism with a celebration of the same.
