Scan barcode
jess_mango's review against another edition
4.0
Asha is a bit of a typical pHD candidate coder..brilliant, sarcastic, socially awkward, and self-conscious... she is working on her pet project: an AI platform. Then she reconnects with her high school crush, Cyrus, an enigmatic guy who excels at creating personalized rituals for people. The two quickly decide to get married and, with their best friend Jules, create a start-up combining Asha's AI platform and Cyrus' knack for personalized rituals. They create kind of a new age alternative to social media. The trio rides the roller coaster of start-up life and all the related drama.
This book had a lot of dark humor and cynicism, which I appreciate, and having worked in high-tech for forever and ever, I enjoyed it. Parts of it, including the ending, fell slightly flat for me, though. I would read other stuff by the author, though. :)
3.5 stars
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
This book had a lot of dark humor and cynicism, which I appreciate, and having worked in high-tech for forever and ever, I enjoyed it. Parts of it, including the ending, fell slightly flat for me, though. I would read other stuff by the author, though. :)
3.5 stars
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
melodys_library's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this more than I thought I would! It’s written from the first-person perspective of the main character Asha, and I grew to really like and empathize with her - especially with the stresses of being a woman of color in the male-dominated tech world.
saffron7's review against another edition
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
lastpaige111's review against another edition
5.0
I rate books highly, because as a writer, I appreciate the blood and tears that go into making them and how imperfect they are, just like their authors and readers, a meta-personification that makes cosmic sense.
Then, I come across a novel like this one and I falter. I have abused the five stars. I need to give this one six stars for its near perfection, for its heart and truth and incisive fearlessness. Where is the sixth star for the truly extraordinary, the boldly unique?
A visionary story of a visionary, with all the right feminist underpinnings, this story will stay with me as strongly as the chaos that serves as the deus ex machina for not just this story but also all of us limping along, fragile and worn, in 2021. Very few plots do stay with me, which can be embarrassing for an English professor. I am certain that this one, like Austen’s and Atwood’s and Kingsolver’s and Murdoch’s and Roy’s … this one will.
Then, I come across a novel like this one and I falter. I have abused the five stars. I need to give this one six stars for its near perfection, for its heart and truth and incisive fearlessness. Where is the sixth star for the truly extraordinary, the boldly unique?
A visionary story of a visionary, with all the right feminist underpinnings, this story will stay with me as strongly as the chaos that serves as the deus ex machina for not just this story but also all of us limping along, fragile and worn, in 2021. Very few plots do stay with me, which can be embarrassing for an English professor. I am certain that this one, like Austen’s and Atwood’s and Kingsolver’s and Murdoch’s and Roy’s … this one will.
lk222's review against another edition
5.0
Holy crap this book was so funny, clever, insightful, and GREAT. Tahmima Anam, I have so many questions for you and your amazing brain.
Asha Ray develops a program based on her new husband’s innate ability to create profound, sacred-yet-secular rituals for any life occasion, without the messy-judgy-exclusivity of religion. Asha’s program asks a few questions and delivers an outline for a new ritual. It could be a wedding ceremony inspired by The Odyssey, or an Opening of the Mouth funeral service derived from the arcane lore of Game of Thrones and The Great British Baking Show. It could be a baptism for your cat.
Asha, Cyrus, and their best friend Jules cultivate a new format of technology, one that fights against the inherent “evils” of tech and social media, one that is not only good for society but might have the power to save humanity after the apocalypse, whenever that may be. But what happens when your invention goes beyond viral and begins to evolve into something more than a program? What happens when the world thinks your husband is the new messiah?
I want to play with this program SO BADLY. I Googled it just to make sure it wasn’t secretly in existence in some form (it’s not). Anyway, I adore Asha. She’s wildly smart, funny, passionate, and imperfect. Following her as she navigates the tech industry as a woman of color in a dominantly white male world felt so real. I laughed and sighed alongside her repeatedly. In addition to being the propulsion behind the story, Asha reveals the thousand subtle cuts women give themselves as they make room for others and how those actions can affect those around them. Asha’s also the first protagonist I’ve read to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
I have no interest in tech but I absolutely LOVED this book! It was so much fun and such a great catalyst for speculation about society, the future, and, yes, technology. The end was shocking and galvanizing, but I’ll say no more. Just add The Startup Wife to your TBR, out in the US on July 13th.
Asha Ray develops a program based on her new husband’s innate ability to create profound, sacred-yet-secular rituals for any life occasion, without the messy-judgy-exclusivity of religion. Asha’s program asks a few questions and delivers an outline for a new ritual. It could be a wedding ceremony inspired by The Odyssey, or an Opening of the Mouth funeral service derived from the arcane lore of Game of Thrones and The Great British Baking Show. It could be a baptism for your cat.
Asha, Cyrus, and their best friend Jules cultivate a new format of technology, one that fights against the inherent “evils” of tech and social media, one that is not only good for society but might have the power to save humanity after the apocalypse, whenever that may be. But what happens when your invention goes beyond viral and begins to evolve into something more than a program? What happens when the world thinks your husband is the new messiah?
I want to play with this program SO BADLY. I Googled it just to make sure it wasn’t secretly in existence in some form (it’s not). Anyway, I adore Asha. She’s wildly smart, funny, passionate, and imperfect. Following her as she navigates the tech industry as a woman of color in a dominantly white male world felt so real. I laughed and sighed alongside her repeatedly. In addition to being the propulsion behind the story, Asha reveals the thousand subtle cuts women give themselves as they make room for others and how those actions can affect those around them. Asha’s also the first protagonist I’ve read to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
I have no interest in tech but I absolutely LOVED this book! It was so much fun and such a great catalyst for speculation about society, the future, and, yes, technology. The end was shocking and galvanizing, but I’ll say no more. Just add The Startup Wife to your TBR, out in the US on July 13th.
hewlettelaine's review against another edition
1.0
I thought that this book was going to be an amusing take down of tech pretension (with which I am familiar) and an exploration of the tensions inherent in working with your spouse. Unfortunately the parody of tech culture is far too heavy-handed and the central relationship of the novel is positively toxic, as are pretty much all of the main characters. I'm not sure if this was done on purpose by the author but with nobody to root for in this story, it makes for frustrating reading.
The novel centres on Asha, a talented computer programmer working with AI, who partners up with her husband and his best friend to create WAI - a social media platform based around the notion of creating personalised, non-religion specific rituals and ceremonies to mark major life events and to then create communities of people who share an interest in, for example, baptising their cats. As the platform explodes in popularity, relationships begin to fray and Asha starts to question her role in the business and her role in her marriage.
Asha is a deeply frustrating narrator and central figure. Despite being capable and intelligent in her work, she willingly abdicates responsibility again and again to her husband and the only real reason we are given for this is because "she loves him," which is so very tired and disappointing as a motivator. Her obsession with placating her husband might have been something if he had any redeeming features whatsoever but he is such a deeply unpleasant individual, it's hard to understand at all. Asha has an unrequited school girl crush on Cyrus and when he comes back into her life as adults, she jumps at the chance to be with him. He is a strange, supposedly enigmatical figure and his bad behaviour is constantly excused and enabled by everyone around him because he is a "genius". After he is created CEO and public facing front-man of the company, he becomes increasingly tyrannical and Asha is pushed further and further out to the fringes of her own company. She remains an annoyingly passive figure, unable to get over the butterflies in her tummy every time she looks at him, even when she knows the situation is becoming actively dangerous.
The obvious ridicule of the culture in the tech industry is very heavy indeed. Nobody can get so much as drink of water in the novel without it coming from somewhere suitably pretentious and unnecessary. It starts to grate after a while and is a distraction from the story. There might be something significant in the idea of social media platforms reaching every further into our lives and AI interfering in the very human experiences of things like death and grief, but it's a small positive in what was ultimately not a massively enjoyable read.
The novel centres on Asha, a talented computer programmer working with AI, who partners up with her husband and his best friend to create WAI - a social media platform based around the notion of creating personalised, non-religion specific rituals and ceremonies to mark major life events and to then create communities of people who share an interest in, for example, baptising their cats. As the platform explodes in popularity, relationships begin to fray and Asha starts to question her role in the business and her role in her marriage.
Asha is a deeply frustrating narrator and central figure. Despite being capable and intelligent in her work, she willingly abdicates responsibility again and again to her husband and the only real reason we are given for this is because "she loves him," which is so very tired and disappointing as a motivator. Her obsession with placating her husband might have been something if he had any redeeming features whatsoever but he is such a deeply unpleasant individual, it's hard to understand at all. Asha has an unrequited school girl crush on Cyrus and when he comes back into her life as adults, she jumps at the chance to be with him. He is a strange, supposedly enigmatical figure and his bad behaviour is constantly excused and enabled by everyone around him because he is a "genius". After he is created CEO and public facing front-man of the company, he becomes increasingly tyrannical and Asha is pushed further and further out to the fringes of her own company. She remains an annoyingly passive figure, unable to get over the butterflies in her tummy every time she looks at him, even when she knows the situation is becoming actively dangerous.
The obvious ridicule of the culture in the tech industry is very heavy indeed. Nobody can get so much as drink of water in the novel without it coming from somewhere suitably pretentious and unnecessary. It starts to grate after a while and is a distraction from the story. There might be something significant in the idea of social media platforms reaching every further into our lives and AI interfering in the very human experiences of things like death and grief, but it's a small positive in what was ultimately not a massively enjoyable read.
noranne's review against another edition
3.0
This book was fine, for me. You can basically guess where it's going from the first chapter and never really wavered from that, so it was a bit boring going and I found myself checking several times just how much longer there was to listen. This isn't helped by the main character's narration, which is in a tone of looking back from the future, so you really feel how the inevitable story is inevitable. Speaking of Asha, I wasn't super enamored with her. Her big character arc is basically sucking for most of the book so she can finally realize it in the end, which for me is not super enjoyable to read.
There was a cute interview at the end between the narrator and the author, who are both Bangladeshi immigrants (as is Asha).
There was a cute interview at the end between the narrator and the author, who are both Bangladeshi immigrants (as is Asha).
lalachun's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
gabmc's review against another edition
4.0
This was a really fun and funny book that explores social media and its influence, start-ups and their strange culture, women in technology, being married to a guru and the immigrant experience in America. Asha is a super smart PhD candidate at MIT when she re-meets her high school crush, Cyrus. Cyrus has turned into a sort of new age guru who is all knowledgeable about religions of the world, religious history and all of the rituals they contain. Turns out that Cyrus was also in love with Asha in high school and they get married within days of re-uniting. They move in with Jules, Cyrus' best friend and start talking about the project that Asha is working on. Asha and Jules decide they could make a new social media platform, using her coding skills and Cyrus' knowledge. So 'We Are Infinite - WAI' (pronounced 'why') is born. They move into a startup incubation club, called 'Utopia' where everyone is preparing for the end of the world. Despite Cyrus' initial principles around money, and not making any, WAI needs to attract investors to continue. This could be where the problems begin. Or it could be that WAI turns Cyrus into a new age Messiah. Whatever the reasons, the story follows the progression of WAI, Asha and Cyrus and the decisions they make.
andrew_j_r's review against another edition
4.0
I read this book after hearing the author talking about it on the BBC Radio 4 show Open Book.
This is an interesting story that kept me guessing, I had no idea where it was going until it got there.
Ostensibly it is about the startup of a new social media network called WAI (We Are Infinite) which aspires to be something different. And at the start, it definitely is. But as more people become involved the idea gets diluted and mixed with less wholesome ideas and people.
Of course this is not what it is about. It’s about misogyny. It’s about the cult of celebrity. It’s about the one person in the whole mess that keeps her head screwed on, can see where things are going to go wrong, tells people, and gets shot down for it by everyone around her.
As I said at the start, I was not sure where the book was going but I very much enjoyed the characters, and the end was kind of inevitable but more shocking than I had thought it would be.
It also wove current events into the story. It’s the first book that has acknowledged Covid that I have read - all the signs were there, but I assumed that it would not go in that direction, and it surprised and shocked me when it did.
A great story, and a shocking but very real ending. I will be checking out some of the author’s other books in the near future.
This is an interesting story that kept me guessing, I had no idea where it was going until it got there.
Ostensibly it is about the startup of a new social media network called WAI (We Are Infinite) which aspires to be something different. And at the start, it definitely is. But as more people become involved the idea gets diluted and mixed with less wholesome ideas and people.
Of course this is not what it is about. It’s about misogyny. It’s about the cult of celebrity. It’s about the one person in the whole mess that keeps her head screwed on, can see where things are going to go wrong, tells people, and gets shot down for it by everyone around her.
As I said at the start, I was not sure where the book was going but I very much enjoyed the characters, and the end was kind of inevitable but more shocking than I had thought it would be.
It also wove current events into the story. It’s the first book that has acknowledged Covid that I have read - all the signs were there, but I assumed that it would not go in that direction, and it surprised and shocked me when it did.
A great story, and a shocking but very real ending. I will be checking out some of the author’s other books in the near future.