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Açaí: A Story About Loving a “Different” Child in a World Obsessed with Perfection
What if “fixing” a child meant losing the child you loved?
Noah Müller is 15, autistic, and happiest under the lemon tree in front of his family’s small house in Sunnyvale. Then NeuralNext—Elon Musk’s new mind-enhancement company—offers his parents a a procedure that will help Noah “connect his brain” and learn faster.
It works. Too well. Overnight, Noah becomes a global podcasts, talk shows, AI conferences. His mother becomes an influencer. His father, once the smiling guard at NeuralNext’s front door, is quietly replaced by the very system his son created. And in the middle of the flashing cameras, something fragile disappears—the warm, messy, imperfect boy they were trying to help.
Açaí is a tender, cinematic novel about parents who love deeply but are afraid, a world obsessed with optimization, and a small guinea pig who is sometimes the only thing that can calm a child’s storms. It asks a simple question with no easy What is a “better” child—and for whom?
For listeners of The Midnight Library, Klara and the Sun, and quiet, heart-forward literary fiction about family, technology, and the courage to love a child exactly as they are.
Noah Müller is 15, autistic, and happiest under the lemon tree in front of his family’s small house in Sunnyvale. Then NeuralNext—Elon Musk’s new mind-enhancement company—offers his parents a a procedure that will help Noah “connect his brain” and learn faster.
It works. Too well. Overnight, Noah becomes a global podcasts, talk shows, AI conferences. His mother becomes an influencer. His father, once the smiling guard at NeuralNext’s front door, is quietly replaced by the very system his son created. And in the middle of the flashing cameras, something fragile disappears—the warm, messy, imperfect boy they were trying to help.
Açaí is a tender, cinematic novel about parents who love deeply but are afraid, a world obsessed with optimization, and a small guinea pig who is sometimes the only thing that can calm a child’s storms. It asks a simple question with no easy What is a “better” child—and for whom?
For listeners of The Midnight Library, Klara and the Sun, and quiet, heart-forward literary fiction about family, technology, and the courage to love a child exactly as they are.
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Published December 19, 2025
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