…The novel [Hum] takes place in a dystopian world that is at once recognizable and subtly different from our own. Climate change has devastated the environment. ("If only the forests hadn't burned," May thinks. "If only it wasn't so hard, so expensive, getting out of the city, getting beyond the many rings of industry and blight.") Cameras and screens are as omnipresent as the pollution in the air; privacy, access to nature, and freedom from advertising have become luxury goods. Many jobs have been automated, including May's. Previously employed by a company that developed "the communicative abilities of artificial intelligence," May was laid off after unwittingly training an A.I. network that made her obsolete. Her husband, Jem, a former photographer, is keeping them afloat as a gig worker, emptying mousetraps and cleaning out closets. The couple's anxiety about the future has filtered down to their children, the eight-year-old Lu and six-year-old Sy, who are shown doting on a cockroach, obsessing over disaster-preparedness manuals, and rejoicing at flavorless strawberries. The kids fill their insomniac parents with love and fear. "What will this planet hold for them by the time they're our age?" May and Jem ask, clutching each other in bed...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/26/hum-helen-phillips-book-review
No comments:
Post a Comment