eBook, 270 pages

English language

Published by Simon & Schuster.

ISBN:
9781668008836
No rating (1 review)

From the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Need comes an extraordinary novel about a wife and mother who—after losing her job to AI—undergoes a procedure that renders her undetectable to surveillance…but at what cost?

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than …

2 editions

not what I expected

No rating

I bought this book because Jeff VanderMeer blurbed it. It was not what I expected. All the issues with tech (AI, privacy, virality, inequity and inequality, the difficulties of parenting in a world of devices) are right on the surface. The book reads like YA fiction, but it doesn't appear to be marketed that way. I skimmed through to the end to figure out the narrative payoff, but mostly this book just wasn't what I was expecting.

Subjects

  • Science Fiction