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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
A work friend and I often joke about how forgettable we are as we are ignored, forgotten or wiped out of collective memories. However, our experiences are nothing compared to what happens to Hope - at least our friends and family remember us! It is truly unsettling reading about Hope's slow disappearance from her community in her mid-teens. And, later in her life, the general public's obsession with "Perfection" is equally uncomfortable. A weird and compelling story about attention, social media and self-obsession.
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
I think Claire North might be a genius. While I can't say that I liked this book as much as [b:The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August|20706317|The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August|Claire North|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1407712314s/20706317.jpg|25807847], I am fascinated by this woman's mind and will be picking up all her books. These are the kinds of science fictions books that I love - set in our familiar world with one aspect that's just a little different.
This follows Hope, a woman who, as a teen, starts to disappear from people's minds. When she is interacting with others, all is normal, but as soon as she is out of sight, their minds forget everything about her and believe they spent that time alone. Of course this means that she can't develop friendships, hold down a job or do a lot of "normal" things, but it makes her an excellent thief.
The other aspect explored in this book is an over-reaching app called Perfection which tracks everything from its users by monitoring their financials, internet usage, GPS, keystokes and phone's camera and assigns points when the person eats the right food, uses the right products, visits the right location, etc. Those who follow the instructions are beautiful, fit, wealthy and "perfect". It's easy to see how tempting it would be to have a piece of technology tell us how to live better.
Hope gets involved in taking down Perfection and it is fascinating to watch as she interacts with others and uses her "condition" to her advantage. If she is trying to get info out of someone and says the wrong thing, she can excuse herself and walk around the room. When she comes back to that person, she starts the interaction over and tries a different approach. How repetitive and boring her life must be sometimes.
I really enjoyed the experience of reading this one and getting inside Hope's head but I felt the book was just a little too long and I was a little fatigued with the inner monologue by the end.
Thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
This follows Hope, a woman who, as a teen, starts to disappear from people's minds. When she is interacting with others, all is normal, but as soon as she is out of sight, their minds forget everything about her and believe they spent that time alone. Of course this means that she can't develop friendships, hold down a job or do a lot of "normal" things, but it makes her an excellent thief.
The other aspect explored in this book is an over-reaching app called Perfection which tracks everything from its users by monitoring their financials, internet usage, GPS, keystokes and phone's camera and assigns points when the person eats the right food, uses the right products, visits the right location, etc. Those who follow the instructions are beautiful, fit, wealthy and "perfect". It's easy to see how tempting it would be to have a piece of technology tell us how to live better.
Hope gets involved in taking down Perfection and it is fascinating to watch as she interacts with others and uses her "condition" to her advantage. If she is trying to get info out of someone and says the wrong thing, she can excuse herself and walk around the room. When she comes back to that person, she starts the interaction over and tries a different approach. How repetitive and boring her life must be sometimes.
I really enjoyed the experience of reading this one and getting inside Hope's head but I felt the book was just a little too long and I was a little fatigued with the inner monologue by the end.
Thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
Liked it, though the plot got pretty convoluted near the end. And then it just…ended.
more of a 2.5 but I rounded up. This book left me not sure what I felt about it.
Hope has a face you will forget. No seriously. At 16 suddenly people started forgetting her the moment they were no longer focused on her. Parents, teachers, everyone. It came to the point were her parents didn't even remember having her. So she left.
Over the years she became a thief. Not just a thief, but a good one. You almost have to when people forget you after 60 seconds of not talking to or looking at you. Hard to hold down a regular job, get a house - when you're forgettable. Not to mention, if they forget you - hard to press charges.
But many years after figuring out how to survive, she becomes mixed up in a strange case. A woman that she considers a friend (though she always has to introduce herself to the woman) dies after being involved with the Perfection app. Perfection helps you achieve just that. You get points for eating the right things, doing the right things, buying and wearing the right things, having the right job, etc. So Hope gets retaliation by stealing from the creators. Only she learns that there is something darker to Perfection than what it seems. Perfection is no so perfect.
The story/plot was ok. The constant stream of consciousness from Hope make it at times difficult to keep my focus. And frankly, other than her having a very unique "gift", Hope really didn't have much in the way of redeeming features.
What I will say is that this book did make me look at how I interact in the world, the impact I have on the people I interact with, the idea of true freedom and how the world bends and shifts to the Societal pressures that we get from media. Do you have Perfection?
Hope has a face you will forget. No seriously. At 16 suddenly people started forgetting her the moment they were no longer focused on her. Parents, teachers, everyone. It came to the point were her parents didn't even remember having her. So she left.
Over the years she became a thief. Not just a thief, but a good one. You almost have to when people forget you after 60 seconds of not talking to or looking at you. Hard to hold down a regular job, get a house - when you're forgettable. Not to mention, if they forget you - hard to press charges.
But many years after figuring out how to survive, she becomes mixed up in a strange case. A woman that she considers a friend (though she always has to introduce herself to the woman) dies after being involved with the Perfection app. Perfection helps you achieve just that. You get points for eating the right things, doing the right things, buying and wearing the right things, having the right job, etc. So Hope gets retaliation by stealing from the creators. Only she learns that there is something darker to Perfection than what it seems. Perfection is no so perfect.
The story/plot was ok. The constant stream of consciousness from Hope make it at times difficult to keep my focus. And frankly, other than her having a very unique "gift", Hope really didn't have much in the way of redeeming features.
What I will say is that this book did make me look at how I interact in the world, the impact I have on the people I interact with, the idea of true freedom and how the world bends and shifts to the Societal pressures that we get from media. Do you have Perfection?
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I had a hard time getting into this book and, at times, a hard time sticking with it. This quote near the end is the premise that interested me and kept me going;
"We have sacrificed thought," she replied flatly, voice hard, eyes steady. "We live in a land of freedom, and the only freedoms we choose are to spend, fuck, and eat, The rest is taboo. Loner. Slut. Weirdo. Faggot. Whore. Bitch. Druggie. Scrounger. Ugly. Poor. Muslim. Other. Hate the other. Kill the other. Aspire, as us, to be together, to become better, to become... perfect. Perfection. A unified ideal. Perfection: flawless. Perfection: white, rich, male. Perfection: car, shoe, dress, smile. Perfection: the death of thought.
"We have sacrificed thought," she replied flatly, voice hard, eyes steady. "We live in a land of freedom, and the only freedoms we choose are to spend, fuck, and eat, The rest is taboo. Loner. Slut. Weirdo. Faggot. Whore. Bitch. Druggie. Scrounger. Ugly. Poor. Muslim. Other. Hate the other. Kill the other. Aspire, as us, to be together, to become better, to become... perfect. Perfection. A unified ideal. Perfection: flawless. Perfection: white, rich, male. Perfection: car, shoe, dress, smile. Perfection: the death of thought.
This book was almost lost in execution. In terms of story, this is the strongest concept that North has envisioned, and the myriad sequences in which Hope is repeatedly forgotten and then met again are very well done and accurately (probably--not much real experience to draw from) portray the existence of having nobody. This book almost lost me with the huge shift around 300 pages in. The story was just trucking along great, then suddenly Hope starts losing time (Hello, Kepler) and she goes crazy for like 50 pages. This whole sequence was uncharacteristic of North's brilliant writing style, as it was very tough to follow and left the reader unsure as to what was happening (usually we are unsure of why something is happening). This book's third act mostly redeems this book, but then the protracted ending almost loses it again. Overall, a great book, but when North has written masterpieces, it is tough to compare. Still worth reading for the Claire North fan.
4,1 stars
It took me a month to read this book, which sums up why this wasn't a five star read for me.
I enjoyed the plot and I think the themes in this book were fascinating while quite creepy in their plausibility. (I have serious misgivings of having ever installed Facebook Messenger on my phone, for one thing.) The characters seemed real enough and Hope's condition was described convincingly. I did have a hard time relating to (or even empathizing with) Hope, though, which might have been intentional on the author's part. Or maybe not.
The one thing that I had most issues with, is also one of the good things about this book, and that was the writing style. Hope has lived her formative and adult years without any emotional connection to anyone, and in order to keep herself sane, she has constructed her consciousness to be made up of lists, and mantras, and trivia. And this was portrayed heavily in the way the story was told. While I understood what North was trying to convey with the writing (and she did succeed as well, to an extent), the stylistic decisions were so dominant that for me, they kept pulling me from the story, making this a very, truly, incredibly slow read. Even more so because the plot was quite interesting, so it's a feat in itself to make this lack any sort of pull.
I think I would have enjoyed this more had the book been around a 150 pages shorter.
However, this was a good book in the end, just maybe not something I was in the mood for right now. (And it definitely did not measure up to Harry August, which I should never have measured this against to begin with.)
It took me a month to read this book, which sums up why this wasn't a five star read for me.
I enjoyed the plot and I think the themes in this book were fascinating while quite creepy in their plausibility. (I have serious misgivings of having ever installed Facebook Messenger on my phone, for one thing.) The characters seemed real enough and Hope's condition was described convincingly. I did have a hard time relating to (or even empathizing with) Hope, though, which might have been intentional on the author's part. Or maybe not.
The one thing that I had most issues with, is also one of the good things about this book, and that was the writing style. Hope has lived her formative and adult years without any emotional connection to anyone, and in order to keep herself sane, she has constructed her consciousness to be made up of lists, and mantras, and trivia. And this was portrayed heavily in the way the story was told. While I understood what North was trying to convey with the writing (and she did succeed as well, to an extent), the stylistic decisions were so dominant that for me, they kept pulling me from the story, making this a very, truly, incredibly slow read. Even more so because the plot was quite interesting, so it's a feat in itself to make this lack any sort of pull.
I think I would have enjoyed this more had the book been around a 150 pages shorter.
However, this was a good book in the end, just maybe not something I was in the mood for right now. (And it definitely did not measure up to Harry August, which I should never have measured this against to begin with.)
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated