Whether you’re staunchly against reality television and its vapid stars and plotlines, or you can’t stop tuning into the latest group of hotties paired in unusual and startling ways, you can’t deny the pull of the genre and how it highlights and amplifies our worst qualities. In THE COMPOUND by debut novelist Aisling Rawle, readers are invited into perhaps the most dystopian reality show yet: a remote desert compound inhabited by 19 of America’s sexiest men and women, and the increasingly depraved acts they must perform to win.

There are three primary rules at the compound: 1) Never, ever mention that you are on a TV show or that the program exists; 2) Never discuss your life before the compound; and 3) Never enact violence on another contestant. Living by this code, 10 men and 10 women must cohabitate at what initially is an empty compound. They have to perform various tasks in order to receive basic items, followed by pricier and more luxurious ones. The activities range from the innocent (telling the contestants about your first kiss) to the depraved (breaking a personal item belonging to one of your competitors).

And there’s a catch: Everyone must go to bed (literally) with a member of the opposite sex or be banished the next day, forced to walk off the compound and into the desert, never gaining the show’s top prizes. All the while, contestants are given personal tasks that they can use to acquire items that will make them more comfortable or more attractive to their castmates. However, they aren't allowed to reveal which of their actions are task-based and which are real. On the surface, it sounds not too different from most of the reality shows airing today, but that’s just because you haven’t entered the compound yet.

"THE COMPOUND is easily the most unsettling novel I have read in years. Witty and irreverent, prescient and shrewd, it is a crackling, searing critique of reality television, the vulgarities of desire, and the fabrication of emotion that also somehow celebrates the absurdity of it all."

At the start of THE COMPOUND, we meet Lily, who has just awoken in the compound with no idea or memory of how she got there. She finds the other women, and they all band together to ready the house for their male counterparts. The men have been released into the desert and forced to find one another first and then the compound. But when they arrive, one of them already has been eliminated. So there’s an odd number of men vs. women, and one woman inevitably will be banished by morning because there’s no man to share her bed.

Starting at an imbalance naturally sets the contestants on edge, but there’s something else. Some of the men arrive bloodied and agitated, and rumors of a fight or a dog attack are whispered throughout the compound. Of the men, Tom, who is big and brawny, is the bloodiest and therefore believed to be the most unstable. But when you can’t actually talk about yourself or your life, how are you to accurately perceive anyone?

Still, Lily and her costars soon begin to warm to one another, with Lily being ranked as the second-hottest of the women. When she is chosen as hottest-guy Ryan’s bedmate, it seems that her time at the compound is set and assured. Surely, audiences won’t be clamoring to force producers to get rid of the hottest couple. However, other divides are starting to creep into their dynamics. While the castmates were once in the real world, where their beauty was basically currency, the playing field has been leveled in the compound. This leaves the erstwhile hotties to rely on their charm and good will, which is quickly shown to be lacking in at least half of them.

Lily isn’t deluded. She knows her best quality is her beauty and that she is otherwise shallow and uninteresting, even though she is good at reading people. And that’s exactly why she knows that something isn’t adding up about the men’s story concerning what happened in the desert. But with tasks piling up every day and the demand growing for basic necessities like soap and shampoo, doors and seating, the pressure is on to be not just beautiful enough to land a bedmate, but interesting enough to draw ratings and helpful enough not to be hated.

As the group learns to work together, the assignments begin to grow in cruelty and severity. The combination of the pressure of these exercises and the rush to the finish line causes several to crack, unmoored without their phones and contact with the outside world --- but also without any sense of time, the knowledge that they are always being watched, and, in true dystopian style, the need to constantly thank sponsors for every gift, all in the hope of landing a brand deal when the show is over.

THE COMPOUND is easily the most unsettling novel I have read in years. Witty and irreverent, prescient and shrewd, it is a crackling, searing critique of reality television, the vulgarities of desire, and the fabrication of emotion that also somehow celebrates the absurdity of it all. Starting with her vaguely dystopian setting --- Lily makes references to “the wars” and the futility of life outside, which she believes may grant her only another “20 years, maybe 30” --- Aisling Rawle has crafted a fully realized, incredibly immersive world in which nothing is quite real. Everything is up for questioning, including her morally ambiguous characters. This surreality takes a toll on the contestants, but as the author bravely demonstrates, it leaves its mark on us as we lose sight of what is real, remarking only when shock or conflict draws us out of our stupors, and paying for brutality as entertainment, regardless of the moral costs.

Add to this some poignant takedowns of luxury consumerism --- Lily completes one of her first truly mean tasks in exchange for earrings --- and you have a provocative, explosive work that pairs a juicy premise with some seriously chilling twists.

But THE COMPOUND is not all scathing takedowns and analyses. In giving readers a bold, unflinching look at the behind-the-scenes of reality TV --- particularly as viewed through our own crises of climate change and economic instability --- Rawle also affirms its most obvious take: it’s fun (really, really fun, unfortunately) to watch hot people do bad things. And it’s clear that Rawle enjoys her fun.