MacKenzie Scott’s new novel, ‘Last Days,’ explores a partitioned America, but struggles under the weight of its own cinematic pacing and editorial gaps.
The divide in MacKenzie Scott’s new novel is absolute. America is split between the Dakota Membership—a surveillance state governed by President Damian Paxton—and Still United. a collection of the former nation’s remaining states. In the Dakota territories, citizens are managed through an elaborate system of rewards and constant self-improvement. The government’s reach is total: in-utero genetic editing is standard. and those displaying traits like originality or rebelliousness are sent to “self-improvement centers.”.
Scott tracks this fractured world over a single week through the eyes of eighteen different characters. Among them is Liv Lockhart. an event planner for the Bureau of Rewards for Courage—a government agency inexplicably housed in a haunted hotel. Liv is the daughter of Magnus Lockhart, the founder of a Scientology-like cult called the Church of the Long Tomorrow. She escaped her father’s underground compound at age twelve during a standoff with armed forces. crawling through an air duct while he promised protection. Today. she works within the system she fears to secure the “unmutilated survival” of her son. who has tested positive for rebelliousness.
The narrative tension often feels split between prose and performance. With its brisk, cinematic efficiency, the book frequently reads like a film script rather than a novel. In one sequence. Liv drugs a high-ranking official with an Ambien-laced mojito. steals his zip drive. and uses a citrus knife to carve an embedded government tracker from her own chest. Elsewhere, a Still United operative named Jonah focuses on training a rat to carry out an explosive mission.
This structural density creates a jarring experience. The plot relies on clichés. such as describing a car’s back seat as “quiet as a tomb. ” and lean-in wordplay like “shitspitality” and “President priss.” The text suffers from visible typos. and its eighteen competing perspectives occasionally destabilize the story. While Toni Morrison. who once mentored Scott at Princeton. wrote in a letter that she shared a disdain for the “heavy handed and the excessive. ” both traits permeate the book. Readers are often left with the sensation of navigating an overwrought text paired with an underwhelming summation of its own political ideas.
Ultimately, the moral architecture of the story is defined by a grim, circular irony. Liv’s efforts to protect her son. much like those of her colleague Gary Handler and the President’s cook. Enrique. are intended to secure safety or medical care within a coercive system. Yet, resistance itself becomes a tool for the state. As the epilogue reveals with blunt finality. the Bureau of Rewards for Courage serves as a front for the resistance; its eventual victory leads to the “defeat of a dictator. ” but results in the “internment and genetic mutilation of half a million people.” In Scott’s world. the cost of subverting the machine is simply becoming part of its next iteration.
MacKenzie Scott Last Days book review literature Substack Dakota Membership dystopian fiction