Journalist Damon Beres, who has covered the right-to-repair movement for years, shares on Slate his response to Josh Bales’ novel “In the Land of Broken Things,” the plot of which centers around desperately trying to fix respiratory equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic:
The great trick of “In the Land of Broken Things” is not that it reveals some horrible “what-if” future; it’s that it reveals the painful absurdity of our immediate situation.
In Josh Bales’ story, the character Donovan is ready to blow a hole in someone to get his wife’s oxygen concentrator fixed. A vital part, the compressor, needs to be replaced, but it’s a specialized design—extras aren’t easy to come by. Our hero, Mallory, goes on a desperate journey to find such a part. She navigates roads that are under the control of corporate drones, dodging a toll and getting detained in response.
Read more on Slate.
