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Followers
by Megan Angelo
Alternating in time between now and thirty-five years into the future, Followers revolves around three women navigating what it means to live a life publicly. In the present day, Orla and her roommate Floss set out to make Floss a star through social media. Their plan ends up making both girls famous, leading them to try to hold onto that fame at any cost. In the future Marlow lives in the town of Constellation where all residents are filmed and their lives' are manipulated through decisions made by writers, sponsors, and follower comments. As the women's stories intertwine, Followers questions just how much privacy we should be protecting and the dangers of living our lives on social media.
This novel is ambitious, particularly in imaging a future where the U.S. is a surveillance state and devices allow us to have complete knowledge at all times, within our heads. The premise is interesting but I found myself wanting to know more about Constellation and "the spill" (which is referred to often but not explained until later in the novel) rather than the 3 main characters.
Orla and Floss are both unlikable and so single minded in their focus that it makes it difficult to sympathize when things go wrong for them. Floss is a vapid fame-seeker and at no point are we supposed to like her but Orla is supposed to counteract that. Instead, I found Orla just as bad. Her dreams of being a famous author in NYC is in part to impress a boy from high school, who also happens to be the boyfriend of her childhood best friend. Since high school she has not made a single friend and even though she is presented as a very normal, average girl in her 20's this seems extreme.
The most fascinating part is the glimpses we get of the future. Devices are put into our wrists so that we can search for information or get notifications in our mind. This includes the people of Constellation who are immediately notified about their likes and comments from the viewers who follow their every move on social media. Marlow has grown up fully in the public eye, with everything from her marriage and possibly having a baby being decided by the writers. She starts on a mission to find out some information about her past and through this we get a broader view of how much has changed in those thirty-five years, as well as how the country go to this point. This backstory becomes the most fascinating parts of the book and made me wish that Floss and Orla were just minor characters within a larger story.
The dangers of technology and the possibility of what could happen in the future are an important theme but this novel misses the mark by spending too much time on Orla's and Floss' messy friendship.
This novel is ambitious, particularly in imaging a future where the U.S. is a surveillance state and devices allow us to have complete knowledge at all times, within our heads. The premise is interesting but I found myself wanting to know more about Constellation and "the spill" (which is referred to often but not explained until later in the novel) rather than the 3 main characters.
Orla and Floss are both unlikable and so single minded in their focus that it makes it difficult to sympathize when things go wrong for them. Floss is a vapid fame-seeker and at no point are we supposed to like her but Orla is supposed to counteract that. Instead, I found Orla just as bad. Her dreams of being a famous author in NYC is in part to impress a boy from high school, who also happens to be the boyfriend of her childhood best friend. Since high school she has not made a single friend and even though she is presented as a very normal, average girl in her 20's this seems extreme.
The most fascinating part is the glimpses we get of the future. Devices are put into our wrists so that we can search for information or get notifications in our mind. This includes the people of Constellation who are immediately notified about their likes and comments from the viewers who follow their every move on social media. Marlow has grown up fully in the public eye, with everything from her marriage and possibly having a baby being decided by the writers. She starts on a mission to find out some information about her past and through this we get a broader view of how much has changed in those thirty-five years, as well as how the country go to this point. This backstory becomes the most fascinating parts of the book and made me wish that Floss and Orla were just minor characters within a larger story.
The dangers of technology and the possibility of what could happen in the future are an important theme but this novel misses the mark by spending too much time on Orla's and Floss' messy friendship.