Interesting ideas overburdened by flat characters and subplots.
Cheung’s debut novel is packed with thrilling ideas about near-future technology.
When cub reporter Sophie wakes for her first day of work, she’s helped by her digital I-ssistant, and she enjoys a relaxing holographic recreation of a lagoon while interacting with a representation of her schedule projected in midair—and that’s only the first page. Other near-future pops up, from new types of transportation to new social technologies, including the Alpha Scores for rating charity and community service. The first half of the novel revolves around a discussion of the role of the market and the individual in society, as presented in a debate between digitally reproduced Karl Marx (rather, three versions of Marx) and the economist Adam Smith. However, while these high-concept ideas and philosophical debates are entertaining, Cheung doesn’t back up the ideas with clearly defined characters for the reader to identify with. Yet there are plenty of players: In addition to Sophie and her I-ssistant personality, Brad, there are also her adoptive parents, Lola and Otto; her biological mother, Xin Sun Er, and grandmother; her fiancé, Mitch; his twin brother, Sam; her colleagues, Karly and Tristan; the three Marx personalities and the Adam Smith construct; her boss and her boss’ many friends; etc. The vast array of ideas may be thrilling, but the large cast of characters can be confusing. On top of that, the narrator sometimes summarizes the situation with a bird’s-eye view, which doesn’t foster emotional identification with the characters, as in one instance when the reader is simply told: “People were shaken….But life went on, and autumn turned into winter.” Lastly, the book loses some excitement due to its structure and slow pacing; in fact, the title object—the virtual game “Presage”—first appears on page 233, finally kicking into gear a thriller plot involving intelligence agencies’ attempt to sabotage the game.
Interesting ideas overburdened by flat characters and subplots.Pub Date: June 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477479988
Page Count: 380
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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