Katie Williams é 1 CHARACTERS
FINALIST FOR 2018 KIRKUS PRIZE
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST LITERARY FICTION OF 2018' BY KIRKUS REVIEWS
Sci-fi in its most perfect expression...Reading it is like having a lucid dream of six years from next week, filled with people you don't know, but will. --NPR
[Williams's] wit is sharp, but her touch is light, and her novel is a winner. - San Francisco Chronicle
Between seasons of Black Mirror, look to Katie Williams' debut novel. --Refinery29
Smart and inventive, a page-turner that considers the elusive definition of happiness.
Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion?
Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of pursuit of happiness. As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either.
Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly. Tell the Machine Goodnight
Multiple narrators, pointless detail, unlikeable characters, and a unsatisfying ending all added up to a waste of my time and made me grumpy. :-( Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult I felt like this book piqued my interest but had no point. It was a masturbatory exercise that I enjoyed initially and thought was going somewhere but really had no point or purpose. I like my stories to make a statement, not just introduce me to cool words and unexplored concepts. I did give it a three, however, because I did enjoy a good amount of it and it is well written. The ending, however, was unsatisfying and then made me question why I had read it in the first place. Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult
It feels so good to have enjoyed a novel so fully that I read it in a day and a half. What had me so keen on the premise of Tell the Machine Goodnight is a) the fact that the synopsis playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes and technology and b) Gabrielle Zevin, one of my favorite authors who excels with her subtle little quips on our daily lives, blurbed it.
Pearl's job is to make people happy. Every day, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion?
Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of pursuit of happiness. As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either.
Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about relationships and the ways that they can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes and technology. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.
Thankfully for my impatient temper, the introducing story starts off compelling enough, in particular, hits the spot for me upon introducing Pearl's sixteen-year-old son, Rhett, who's recovering from an eating disorder. His unknowable, remote nature makes for a natural pull in getting to know more about him. Incidentally, he's also all the things that make me feel fond of a character: distant, moody, hates school, rarely leaves his home, is close to his mother (or getting to it).
To counter his anguished withdrawal, Pearl's powerless state seeps in, when all she craves is to bring her child back from hovering on the brink, so she channels in her overprotective, overbearing, OVEReverything nature, similar to Joyce Byers in Stranger Things.
The following stories move deftly between alternating characters, such as Pearl's ex-husband, Elliot, Pearl's shifty coworker, Carter, Pearl's high-end secret client for Apricity, who gets name-dropped throughout the book so that when we finally meet her it feels like all else has led up to this exact moment. At the heart of it all, though, stands Pearl with her fierce protectiveness (of herself, of her child, of her machine) at her beck and call.
Tell the Machine Goodnight gets so many things right by going outside the box not only on the platitudes of motherhood but through the whip-smart writing and a tremendous cast that lead to having numerous moments and turns of phrase to remind me of how good this book can be. Leading examples include:
• #1
unique store-bought personality is one of the more memorable lines I've read this year.
• #2
Typically, we’d fill in the brackets on our own, but Katie Williams is here to reminds us not to succumb to gender stereotypes.
• Another moment where I felt the author truly shine was with Zihao's introduction (Rhett's college roommate, an international student from China). It takes a special type of writer to succeed at showcasing a character's personality through text messages (and with emoji, no less).
• But he truly caught my attention when he got randomly along with Rhett's mom.
The subtle ingenuity disposed between Rhett and Zi had me smiling like a fool.
• And I'll leave my review with one last riveting insight on something that I'm running over and over in my mind:
I love how, throughout my reading experience, this novel remains utterly self-aware and keeps up with the whip-sharp and INNOVATIVE remarks on our deepest desires. And I know I said the above was the last passage I wanted to share, but I have one more subtle quip for the road: Being home from college for the summer is like sleeping over at a friend's house you've only ever visited in the afternoon. The furniture is familiar, but the light has gone funny on you.
ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Publication Date: June 19th, 2018
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Tell the Machine Goodnight is about Pearl and the people who are part of her life: her son, Rhett, who suffers from anorexia and stubbornly embraces his melancholy; her boss, Carter, who manipulates the Apricity into delivering advice to attain power; and Calla Pax, a young celebrity who commissions Pearl to deliver daily Apricity readings. There’s also Pearl’s ex-husband and his new wife, who hide mysterious secrets from each other.
The bizarre and fascinating vignettes from each of these characters’ lives make up the narrative of this novel about people trying and failing to find happiness and contentment amid the disconnectedness of modern life.
I was thoroughly engaged in each mini storyline, even the ones that felt more disparate and self-contained. This was close to being a 5-star book for me and likely would’ve been if there had been the tiniest bit more closure and cohesiveness in the end.
Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult The blurb sounded very interesting and I was so curious to see how the story would go but unfortunately I'm not the only one feeling rather unsatisfied with the book Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult
“Tell The Machine Goodnight” is a pleasant tale that has the reader meditating over happiness. The protagonist, Pearl is a technician for the Apricity Corporation, and her job is to provide people with what they must do to be happy. This is a part science fiction in that the story takes place in 2035 and what Pearl uses is a small box that takes DNA from the subject and provides the answers in quick succession. Pearl’s job is to collect the sample and talk the subject through the results. And the results are quirky: cease all contact with your brother; eat tangerines; amputate the uppermost section of your right index finger; put a warm blanket on your bed; and so on. I think author Kate Williams enjoyed thinking up crazy ideas to put in her novel.
It’s more than just science fiction, there’s a domestic fiction piece as well in that Pearl is a divorcee with a husband who continues to flirt with her. She has a teenage son who has an eating disorder and is big on self-denial. Pearl thinks she’s generally happy but she questions the happiness of those closest to her: her boss, her ex, and her son.
Williams isn’t too far off in the science fiction piece in that happiness is big on everyone’s mind. Plus, society is relying more on computers and science to find quick fixes for everything. An oracle in a box that takes DNA and provides happiness schemes isn’t too far fetched.
For me, the best part of the novel was Pearl and her ruminations on helping her love ones. Her son, Elliot, also plays strongly in the story. He has his own friends with differing impacts upon him. Elliot also grows up a bit with regard to his relationship with his mother, and his friends.
This is a sweet story. It ends a bit oddly (for me). It’s very much worth a read.
Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult Eh. I get what this book was trying to do, but it was a little too “avant-garde” for me. Everything about this book had a sort of vibe. It was sort of a futuristic. It was sort of funny. It was sort of sad. It was definitely a commentary on our times. I sort of got it, until I didn’t. Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult Half star to one star rating. ☹️
Started out with some possibility of promise and then went downhill quickly from there. Characters unlikeable. The Story was rather boring and not exciting at all. The premise was how much control do we have over our own happiness and what if we could be pushed to achieve it by technology? The concept sounded intriguing but the execution fell flat.
In a future time, people will find happiness through a machine; a system. The main character, Pearl, is a happiness technician using a system at her job, called Apricity. Yet - she has unhappiness in her life. Go figure. Her son has an unhealthy eating habit and so he’s not happy either, evidently. So...Where is the happiness machine when these particular people need it???
If the machine told you to do something adventurous that might be one thing, but it told one person to eat more tangerines. Another to wrap themselves in soft fabric. Don’t listen to your father, arrange fresh flowers. Really? Why am I wasting my time reading this? If that’s all it took to make me happy, one, two or three little things -common sense applications - then why bother with a machine telling me this?
There was one odd happiness thing prescribed to a gentleman to have an amputation if the tip of his finger. Instead of questioning why or saying no, he actually bought into the suggestion for happiness. Now THAT is totally bizarre.
At my age, I know what makes me happy and what doesn’t. I don’t need a machine. But perhaps there are others who need something/someone to tell them what it is they need and take it as gospel. They say that the recommendations made them happy. But is that really true or is it a brainwashing of sorts? Is this what the future holds for mankind?
I read on a little bit more but it continued to be way too painful for me so I did not finish. I don’t know what this would be classified as: futuristic? Fantasy? Technology? Science fiction?
My recommendation? tell this book (not the machine) goodnight! Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult Blew through this in a day, I love a thoughtful, character-focused speculative novel and this was right on target.
The hook of the story is the Apricity machine, and when you write a speculative novel that's set in the near future based on a concept that the reader just has to accept you're walking a fine line. Sometimes the reader still has too many questions about the concept and the world and how it all works. But Williams has thought this all the way through, she presents so many different angles on the machine and the characters in her story that you don't really care all that much about how the machine works, the few questions you may have are usually addressed in some way, but mostly they just move to the back of your brain because What does it matter? There's so much here to sink your teeth into!
Good Sci-Fi is not really about the science, it's about the character and the moral repercussions of the science. This is 100% exactly that, a heavily character-based book. I would say this is light on plot, but so many things happen! It's also a multi-perspective novel that makes very good use of the device.
Would have read 200 more pages. FYI this is the kind of novel people will call literary but mostly that just means that it doesn't really have an ending. Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult I have no idea what the plot was.
The changing POV's and the half truths revealed were confusing.
It felt like I was reading modern philosophy rather than a story.
So why did I give it 4 stars?
I still have no idea.
The writing is amazing even if it doesn't make any sense. Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult
