The Cure for Love
In Lena's world, love is a medical condition: amor deliria nervosa. In other words: delirium. Thankfully there's a cure. Maybe it's like the Felicity Twilight Zone episode, "Help for the Lovelorn."
Anyway, Hana alludes to the cure being "cut[ing] out half our brain" (8.66). But could the government really be performing lobotomies on its citizens? How could they get away with something like that?
Sometimes, we think Lena acts like she's had a lobotomy already, on account of this love business. She gets completely overrun by her emotions. She operates strictly according to how she feels instead of what she thinks. She acts, well, delirious.
Here's what happens when Alex gives her a note:
I'm half-delirious as I open [Alex's note]. [...] I don't remember the run home, and my aunt finds me later half passed out in the hallway, murmuring to myself. (11.18)
It makes her pass out and talk to herself and not realize it. Yeah, Lena be loco.
So, we guess it wouldn't be so bad if Lena wised up and kicked her delirium to the curb. But the real upside to the cure for love's delirium is supposedly that "there's hardly any crime at all in Portland" (21.22). Is that a worthy trade-off for not experiencing any real emotions, in yourself or from other people?
All in all, this book's title points to the problematic ways in which we categorize some things as blessings and others as curses. Because who gets to decide what's good and what's bad for us? What kinds of decisions do we trust our government to make for us, and what kinds of decisions should be left to personal discretion?