Thomson sets up a wildly implausible premise here, and you have to swallow hard to get past it if you're going to enjoy the book at all.
The United Kingdom (never actually named, but that's clearly where the book takes place) is on the verge of social collapse. Crime, racial strife, economic troubles -- all are on the rise, and the government has reached the conclusion that the nation as it stands is ungovernable. It is therefore decided to forcibly separate the population into four new nations. And on what basis is that division to be made? Why, the humours of the citizenry, of course.
The "humours" is a medical/psychological concept that's been discredited since the Middle Ages or so, the notion that our basic psychology is based on imbalances of bodily fluids. Thomson never takes time to explain why this theory has come back into vogue so strongly that it would be used as an organizing concept. But onward we go, with the nation divided into Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow Quarters, homes to (respectively) the sanguine, melancholy, phlegmatic, and choleric.
Our hero is eight years old at the time of The Rearrangement; he is sent to the Red Quarter and a new family, who rename him Thomas Parry. As an adult, Thomas becomes a member of the bureaucracy responsible for psychological classification and relocation; this provides him the opportunity, unavailable to most, to visit the other Quarters.
For a little while, the book holds some interest as a sort of Gulliveresque travelogue through these four societies, but the second half steadily loses energy. The final chapters, when Thomas's actions should lead to some dramatic action, instead dwindle away to a sadly anticlimactic ending.
Thomson's writing is quite nice, but the premise is so absurd and the ending so disappointing that Divided Kingdom falls painfully flat.
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