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A review by lbandoch
Sensation Machines by Adam Wilson
2.0
This is one of those books where the author wrote it (it feels to me) to prove how insightful he his about American Society. But he refuses to acknowledge nuance in our society. My biggest grief is that he says at the end that now there’s wifi on the subway, people read less than ever and bookstores are going away. And that’s in contradiction of pretty much every trend in the book world.
It starts out really good - Michael and Wendy and their falling marriage as a backdrop to Ricky’s murder. And then we’re randomly thrown into various side characters chapters and I kept having to go back to remember who anyone was. And it seems like each of these momentum spoiling chapters was just so the author could once again show how WOKE he is.
I usually love near-future dystopia as a genre, and even literary fiction. But this one was super hard to power through. I wish we had just stuck with Wendy and Michael. But instead the reader is forced to slug through almost 400 pages of societal insight that isn’t really insightful (and a lot of Eminem references).
It starts out really good - Michael and Wendy and their falling marriage as a backdrop to Ricky’s murder. And then we’re randomly thrown into various side characters chapters and I kept having to go back to remember who anyone was. And it seems like each of these momentum spoiling chapters was just so the author could once again show how WOKE he is.
I usually love near-future dystopia as a genre, and even literary fiction. But this one was super hard to power through. I wish we had just stuck with Wendy and Michael. But instead the reader is forced to slug through almost 400 pages of societal insight that isn’t really insightful (and a lot of Eminem references).