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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
I love love, LOVED this book. It's weird in all the right ways, but it also has a fantastic story that can be very relatable.
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
this kind of made me mad literally nothing happened and i thought it would be weirder based on the description
Hard to follow, not marketed correctly imo and also I just don’t care enough
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
‘I stand there patiently, counting along with the machine's heavy breathing, and with every count an A4 sheet slips out until there are eight in total. Then comes a rustling and then a wheezing sound: the printer is choking! The wheezing turns into a gurgling and beeping.
(He's suffocating! Do something!) When people are choking, they will, out of sheer embarrassment, try to find somewhere secluded so they can die in peace. Printers can't do that, they're at the mercy of their partner.’
‘To be honest, it seems like a lot of hassle being rich […] You have to find out which political party wants to keep the mortgage interest rates low and make sure that that party will have the final say in this country. You have to think about the price of petrol and whether it's cheaper across the border, and then calculate whether the difference is worth the trip. Someone's mother once told me, after describing how much the annual maintenance on their sailboat cost, that no property is duty-free’
‘Nerves are contagious; I can sense it in the printer, who’s printing more erratically than normal’
‘The sky looks like a painting, simultaneously gold and blue. It’s like someone is projecting slides above the sea, the clouds changing colour with each click, orange, pink, purple’
‘It wasn't until later, when I received the official documentation, that I discovered that my absence was referred to as being
'put on leave
. But wait a minute, I thought when I
read that. Isn't that just for men? For the ones in the highest roles, who tell you: I can do this for you, but you'll have to go to bed with me. Winking emoji. For men who send you a photo of their penis because it turns them on, there's no other reason (stop looking for another reason). Surely, in that case, being put on leave isn't for women? And then I wonder: am I the first woman ever to be put on leave? Being the first woman to accomplish something is a big deal, so really, I guess, this could be a good thing.’
‘A few Americans want to take selfies with me, they think I'm a statue from Madame Tussaud's that's been put here as an advert. A couple of young students think I'm a piece of modern art, a hyper-realistic sculpture; they're muttering stuff about Baudrillard, about the uncanny valley’
‘The slower you go, the more alive you are, that is my life motto now’
‘With each inhale, the printer made a sound too. Something was shifting about in there. I thought it was a coincidence, but when it happened a third time, I thought, No, he's breathing along with me. Like a supportive husband puffing away next to his wife who's in the midst of giving birth.’
‘There are at least seven different iterations of me, separating the person I once was and the person I am now. I remember someone once compared themselves to the smallest in the pack of Russian dolls. I could be any of them. Would I be the biggest doll - a new doll, grown over the previous version - or am I the smallest one, after the others have all peeled off?
I am, I believe, too young to live so close to my innermost core.’
‘There is a beginning somewhere, I think, you just have to find it, like pulling at the edge of a Sellotape roll. I must aim for something new.’
‘What do you do?' strangers will ask, as they always used to. I wander through the nocturnal city, I would answer. I wander and I'm having this conversation in my mind.’
‘This machine knows everything about me.
He knows my thoughts, my fantasies, my dreams.
My love and my hate. And he is the only one who knows that story, the story for which there's barely any space, except in some dark storage room where no one ever goes. If anyone knows who I am, it is he. He was the listener, I the storyteller. Wasn't that it? Seeing him here now, after such a long time apart, I'm not really sure I believe it. Yes, suddenly I feel it's a question of belief. The machine is just a device, almost just as ordinary as the printers in the copy shop. But for all that time, I thought he was different.’
‘I used to think I could feel something when I turned him on, that I could detect a little spark of energy. The ghost in my machine’
‘What it comes down to, according to the psychology magazines: our formative years determine the rest of our life, and in the case of my best friend and me, those years left us warped and misshapen.
Those years dictate how we will relate to other people in the future: lovers, relatives, authority figures, et cetera, and in our case, those relationships are completely skewed. All kinds of patterns and behaviours have unconsciously been drilled into our brains. You start off on the wrong foot, you adapt to it, and so your personality is built on shaky founda-tions. Ah, are you Pisces on top of everything?’
‘So, due to this series of events, I have one screw inside me that is more prone to abrasion, which ultimately means I'll be declared defective sooner than other machines of my generation. I constantly feel that little screw's presence, like a black poppyseed that's stuck between a human's white teeth (or at least, that's how I imagine it feels).’
‘Everybody wants to be more than just a cog in the machine, and office people like to uphold the idea that they are indeed more than that, that they aren't just working on an assembly line with a spanner in their hand. But I have been here for a long time, and I can tell them: if that's what they think, they are, unfortunately, incorrect.’
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated