I think your appreciation of this book will depend greatly on how you interact with technology, especially the latest generation of AI-focused innovation. That aside, you’ll also either empathize with May as a mother and find her kids Lu and Sy utterly infuriating or find yourself doing that thing where you insist that those who are struggling financially should be perfect to be seen as “deserving.” All that aside, though, I think the book is slightly less clever than it thinks it is but was enjoyable nonetheless—as evidenced by my desire to read in the car (in the car!) to and from NYE, leading me to start of Jan 1 with reading-in-the-car-induced-nausea (as far as reasons for nausea on Jan 1 go, at least much less hazardous to your long term health).
The main plot is as you’d expect, with a third arc conflict that speaks to the shriek-y-ness of online discourse by way of like, telling you that’s exactly what’s happening. There’s very little that’s subtle here, with a greatest hits list of dystopian future tropes: everything is on fire, the AQI is terrible, ads are the driving force of interaction, everything is too expensive, the rich literally pay money to touch grass, everything is tracked all the time, robots have taken the place of humans, etc.
What I did find interesting was the decent amount that’s shared via throwaway (Lu and Sy, May’s irritating AF kids, wear these Fitbit/smart watch-esque tracking bands called “bunnies” that either are or aren’t a play on a Tamagotchi, but also seems to be their best friends? But when May forces them to take them off prior to their trip to Nature Theme Park, the kids use words like “ripped off my wrist” in a way that asks, for a second, if they were surgically attached) (conclusion I came to is that they weren’t, it’s just a way Phillips is showing us about technological dependency).
The nuance seems to be driven by the reader, who’s left to ask who is the victim and who is the villain vis-à-vis all this intrusive, ad-driven technology. Were kids seduced by the charms of an empathetic, always-nearby friend who never asks much of them other than their attention every eight minutes for a series of ads? Or were parents like May enthralled by the idea of opening their phone at any hour and seeing the location and heartbeat of their kids?
Jk there’s no question because the answer is the tech companies (and the larger system we live in, as products of evolution and impulses that are laughably easy to manipulate). They’re sort of benignly evil—not in intention but in effect—because we live in a capitalistic monolith that swears fealty on the altar of “financial incentives driving good behavior” but screams every time you try and quantify external, perhaps unquantifiable downstream effects. The system works, unless you’re trying to make it work in ways that costs us money!