Ply

by Hernan Diaz

Centuries from now, an orphan adrift in an American city grows up to become a pincher. Stealing electricity from the grid to power the vibrant downtown music scene she adores is a risky occupation, and the city she moves through can be dangerous. She is right to be wary. But soon, she is drawn into a paranoid maze where her closest friends and even her own identity are put into question – all while following a thread leading to a scientific experiment that could change the fabric of reality itself.

Set in a future filled with both uncertainty and promise, Ply is a powerfully humane novel that interrogates the role of technology in a deeply changed society. A gripping quest for truth at the dawn of a new historical epoch, it offers us a deep dive into the burden of capitalism, while poignantly charting the boundaries of selfhood, and the distance that stands between us and those we love.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Literary Fiction, Dystopia, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Contemporary

Audible Audio

First published September 29, 2026

About the author

Hernan Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author of Trust. His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, was translated into more than twenty languages, and was one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 books of the year and Literary Hub’s twenty best novels of the decade. Trust, one of The New York Times’s 100 best Books of the Century, was translated into more than thirty languages, received the Kirkus Prize, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and Time magazine, and it was one of The New Yorker’s 12 Essential Reads of the Year and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Diaz’s work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He has received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a fellowship from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Reviews

[sami]

i'm seated. the bookstore employees are scared and asking me to leave because 'it's not september 2026 yet' but i'm simply too seated

[emma]

i'm not above getting book recommendations from pop stars

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Olive Fellows (abookolive)]

I consider it a curse of what will someday be known as "the terrible, horrible, no-good, really bad reading year" that we currently call 2026 that THIS was Hernan Diaz's follow up to Trust.

This read like a bunch of CMU physics students (yes, I live in Pittsburgh. How could you tell?) telling a story by turns through a zine.

The beginning had so much promise, then we devolved into a bunch of physics that I had zero chance of understanding. Listen, I consider myself a moderately intelligent person most of the time. But I assure you, I didn't feel like one from the 50% point of this book onward.

I don't know what the point of this book was. So many questions were left unanswered. The title does not work in the same way Trust did, and it conjures up images of toilet paper. Maybe that's apropos because the cover is not only illegible if you don't already know the title, but it also looks like ass.

Is 7:45 pm on a Friday too early to go to bed? I'm so tired.

[switterbug (Betsey)]

[5++]

ALL THE FEELS
AL THE THINKS
I am stricken; I am conquered. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Reading Hernan Diaz’ Ply was both emotionally riveting and intellectually challenging, my favorite kind of book. Four hundred or more years into the future, we are both advanced and primitive. Money is absent—we barter or use gold. Health care and usual medicine has morphed into a kind of necessary spiritual healing of the Great Lakes due to minimal medication access. Social networks are crude since the Suppression (just how it sounds plus no federal government) and other events have knocked out civilization as we know it now. But there are still some educated scientists who are progressive, and one older woman who is determined to “work with the loom of the universe” to “weave and unweave spacetime itself.” If that doesn’t sound reasonable, read the novel. Immerse yourself. Note that paradoxes rule.

The power of language is consummate.

The voltage of words had me thinking of the Talmud. Being Jewish, I was introduced early to how individual words can shape reality—words aren’t static, they have the power to create and destroy. Words are an objective reality from which existence springs. That happened to me while I read PLY. Point of view is plied as a glimmering tool to augment Time and Space.

The main characters are the unnamed pincher—she steals and preserves and buttresses electricity, often to power punk rock concerts that appeal to her. Then there is Pola, the scientist, an older woman, who teams up with the pincher. There are also gangster type madmen that the pincher needs to accomplish tasks. She is an orphan—her mother was a self-taught tinkerer (like an engineer in our time) and her father was a bookseller who disappeared during the Suppression. A third character come is late—I won’t spoil--as this character emerges in the last eighth of the book.

I do not have the alacrity of language to articulate (the fission and fusion of) this book. If an event horizon could be a novel, then Hernan Diaz is in the vicinity. His acrobatic linguistics fuels the story, commanded me through the parts I didn’t understand. He reminded me at times of David Mitchell, combining the familiar propulsion of plot with the erudite and inscrutable enigma of physics and other sciences. Speculative and stunning, alarming and hopeful. The best part? I didn’t see AI. Climate change was understated. (Pardon me calling physics inscrutable. I want a round table discussion of leading particle, theoretical, and quantum physicists-- but with Hernan Diaz leading the discussion).

There’s too much of the infrastructure (or lack of it) that I haven’t mentioned. I’m trying to keep my review condensed. I want to quote from this book—especially the phenomenal paradoxes like how freezing the laws of science serve to perpetuate it; phrases like blind and all-seeing; genuinely fake, and other opposites that define the indefinable. But I’m reading from an advanced copy—this advanced copy is actually an early copy—dicey to quote from the galley.

I can talk about the inwithin, a house within a house that nobody knows exists, so they can’t find you if you’re in there. I think the ultimate inwithin is the folding of timespace. If you know what a wakefield collider is (I did not), you are already one step ahead. You can easily google it.

Diaz harmonizes fact and fiction, and I will hijack this one passage that is irresistible to me (forgive me Riverhead): “Time is a measure of disorder...time, for us, moves only in one direction...But what if...we could account for every state? There would be no disarray. Once we master this new technology, we will be able to recognize the disorder that is time...Timelines could bifurcate or conjoin according to our design. … We will need a new language to express this, since nothing would be potential anymore.”

Diaz plies linguistics, science of technology, the technology of science, all the emotion and the cerebral of it, the whole world in the palm of Ply .

Thank you, Riverhead, for giving me my favorite book of this year, and many others—past, present, and future.

[Lily Steeper]

Set in an unspecified future, Ply explores a ruined version of New York City after the collapse of the United States. There is no functioning government, life expectancy has plummeted, and the dwindling energy and water supply is tightly controlled by megacorporations. Here is where our protagonist, the unnamed Pincher comes in; she steals electricity from the corporations and stores them in custom batteries called "bricks", using them to power underground music concerts. But her ingenuity starts to take notice.
The Pincher's high risk life brings her underworld attention. A local criminal boss wants to use her inventions for profit. Conversely, a theoretical physicist, Pola, recruits her to build a massive power source. Pola is eccentric, is on a near impossible endeavor to explore the origins of the universe. She comes across as a mad scientist, tottering the line between genius and mentally ill. As the Pincher starts to work with Pola, the plot grows into a scientific thriller. Danger comes in many forms, combining family, trust, and ethics.
As with Diaz's other work, Trust, he employs a unique sense of storytelling. The point of view shifts make it unclear if we are given the true lens of the Pincher. We learn about her orphaned childhood and how she came to be a "pincher", but get little context as to what happened to the society. The world-building was a bit out of taste for me, making it hard to orient myself with the surrounding environment. Furthermore, interesting stylistic choices were made with the narration. Starting with first person, it melts into third person. By the end, he uses destabilizing pronouns and tenses to reflect a fracturing reality. I do think a bit too much effort was made into structuring this novel in a unique way; it felt to cut in half for me. The first half was more enjoyable for me, feeling like an underdog orphan story. Then, the sharp shift to science fiction, threw me off.
At its center, I found the plot quite poignant and intriguing. There are elements of social commentary, touching on corporate rule and mankind's obsession with technology, but they served to build the story rather than subtract from it. I do wish we got a better understanding of the society itself. How far in the future was this? What destroyed society so fundamentally?
I do like how developed the key characters were. Though the perspective was peculiar, I got such a sense of the Pincher. Lola's character as a mad scientist was another catching aspect. As a whole, this was such a unique read. Some of it dragged, frustrating me with the unwarranted attention with making the story setup bizarre. I was not at all satisfied with the ending, finding it not apt for the buildup.

Thanks to Riverhead Books and NetGallery for this ARC!

[jeremy]

as far as we know, we are the only ones in this corner of the universe who have been bestowed with consciousness and language. perhaps the only ones, period. and it took evolution almost four billion years, well over a third of the age of the universe, to get us here. just imagine: you are one of the few beings to be found in light-years upon light-years who has the ability to perceive the cosmos, think about its beauty and complexity, and communicate this sense of awe to others. and what do some people do with the astounding gifts of sentience, thought, and expression? they choose to find ways of increasing profit and accumulating wealth. hard to imagine anything narrower and bleaker, anything emptier of wonder, anything more incurious and unloving.

set centuries hence, hernan diaz's new novel, ply (the follow-up to his magnificent, pulitzer-winning trust), is the riveting tale of a dark future beset by energy woes and wealth disparity. amid a frenetic urban scene, diaz's nameless protagonist ("the pincher") steals electricity to grind out a living for herself. when conflicting loyalties and competing interests raise the stakes of success and even survival, the pincher's whole world is torn asunder. thrumming with dystopian eventualities, ply's outstanding storytelling and seductive world-building are deeply mesmeric. family, trust, ethics, legacy, honor, diaz's latest explores many themes, but, most of all, tells one hell of a galvanic tale.

[Kate O'Shea]

Set in a far distant future, Hernan Diaz takes us to an America that is completely unrecognisable with no explanation of what led to this change.

Society has collapsed, people live in small communes or alone. Life spans are short and precarious. Water and food are precious. In short, people need to be inventive and devious - even "pinch" what they need to stay alive. And if you transgress you may just disappear.

The Pincher is a young woman who uses her skills at "pinching" power from other sources to power up batteries which can be sold. As the novel begins she is living alone and working with a man called Anton who sells her services to people who need power not from the official sources. Her life is all about not getting caught and making enough money to give her security in a very uncertain world. The Pincher has to lie, cheat and steal to have a good life.

But when an opportunity arises to take her life in a totally different direction will she grasp it or revert to type.

I need to admit first off that sci-fi is not a genre I'm crazy about. I also need to admit that I just saw the name Hernan Diaz and requested Netgalley for the DRC. I love his first two novels. His prose is sublime.

However, despite there being several parts thst are character driven and really touching, the main part of the novel is science-heavy and if you don't understand physics you will probably be as utterly lost as I was. There are two huge parts of Ply where a scientist, Polo explains particle acceleration and black holes and, I confess, I skipped the entirety of both.

So, in short, the start and the end of the novel read like a Diaz novel but unless you are of a scientific bent the middle will be like wading through treacle.

I would cheerfully recommend this to anyone fascinated with exploring the possibilities of our universe and understand theoretical physics.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for the digital review copy. I shall keep my eyes peeled for a Diaz more in keeping with In The Distance or Trust.

[Ryan Davison]

Electricity is currency in Ply, and our central protagonist is an unnamed ‘pincher’ who charges fuel cells (known as bricks) by tapping illegal energy sources. She’s an innovative thief and develops a brick with much enhanced capacity, so her services are in high demand. Music is a major theme throughout, and the pincher sells bands the power they need to perform. In this energy starved dystopia, an electricity guzzling display equals more extravagance. Along with brew master partner, Reni,, the pincher has carved out a creative energy supplying/drink serving company called, the intentionally cheesy, Brix and Bricks. In a world where few reach the age of thirty, you get by however you can.

The book is set five hundred years in the future and described in dazzling detail with incredible steampunk imagery under a retro gloss of analog technology. Characters carry tablet-like devices called stells, accessing their personalized wiki-like file stores, and like time immemorial, gather around water stations to trade goods and share news. A defining event, known as 'The Suppression', occurred years previous, a dark day when citizen groups intended to storm the region's two major companies in control of water and energy. Corporate mutiny did not go as planned and the dissenters disappeared. Ply is the story of their children and grandchildren.

For every chapter in real time, we are given one of our unnamed narrator’s emotionally charged backstory. Her youth is filled with gadget lessons from her tinkerer mother who fixed and resold any item imaginable, and after an apprenticeship with a world class technical mind, the pincher grew from naturally gifted, to truly skilled. But developing an ingeniously improved power storing device leads our pincher to Pola, a physicist from The Great Lakes with unimaginable ambition, thrusting the plot in its intended direction.

Like Diaz’s previous novel, Trust, this prose is richly composed and surprising plotlines are cleverly embedded. When a character says their aim is to ‘unknit and reweave spacetime’, readers should expect grandiose developments. The world which serves as a backdrop to Ply is undeniably brilliant, and atmosphere overcomes brief sections that may feel like a university physics lecture. This novel's resounding finale will astound some, and provoke discussion in all. It's a pleasing experience that comes recommended.

While Ply’s themes are planted firmly in science, the environment is reminiscent of the glorious environment created by China Miéville's Perdido Street Station.

Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Riverhead Books for a review copy.

[The Speculative Shelf]

Having not read his prior work, but being aware of his growing literary stature, I was pleasantly surprised by the accessibility of Diaz’s writing. His lyrical prose expertly conjures a dilapidated but vibrant, thrumming city that persists amidst its deterioration. Evocative descriptions include a river that “doesn’t run but oozes…like molten ore” or vacant warehouses reclaimed by roots that have “clawed their witchy fingers into the plaster…with an invisible slowness…in the gentlest of tantrums.” I loved these descriptions. I was equally drawn to the way he explores the main character’s background through flashbacks that add depth and texture to her character.

The second half of the novel abandons much of what I enjoyed about the first half, however. An abrupt pivot from first- to third-person narration feels gimmicky and doesn’t justify itself by the book’s end. That, paired with plot beats that require heavy exposition of quantum theory, really dragged things down. The more it leaned into this, the more I leaned away. I appreciate the time and effort Diaz put into untangling the book’s thornier quantum entanglements,* but the story is worse for it.

In all, Ply is most effective and affecting when it drills deep into its characters, and much less so when it gets tangled in convoluted quantum mechanics. That said, I really enjoyed Diaz’s writing and felt that the extended time I spent in this world was worthwhile.

*The acknowledgements section really shows how seriously Diaz took the research for the novel.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

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[Liz]

I’ve tried three times to get through this one and haven’t made it beyond 25%. Setting it aside for now.

[Dan]

Hernan Diaz’ Ply is set in far future North America. Oral history tells us that the Great Lakes states declared their independence from the United States and their secession was unopposed. The United States itself is a distant, barely recalled memory. ”Your grandmother could trace our lineage all the back to the times of the United States. Our great-great-great-great grandmother was a lawyer. Can you imagine? I honestly don’t know how many ‘great-greats’ we need before ‘grandmother,’ but there it is. A lawyer. . . What were lawyers? How could people possibly have profited from the law? Who got to be a judge.” Widespread literacy no longer exists, replaced by looking at drawn icons. Medicine as we know it has disappeared, as have functioning governments and civil societies. The infrastructure that we take for granted—potable water, sewer systems, electricity, and heating oil and gas—has fallen away. Cities fall into complete disrepair and collapse, and waterways are clogged with the detritus of hundreds of years of neglect. Twenty-first century electronic and manual appliances have become ancient relics, restored or maintained only by revered skilled tinkers.

Ply takes place in what we can surmise was once a major American city on the east coast. The core small cast includes three women spanning decades in age, all smart, skilled, and independent. The youngest is prepubescent Ines—homeless, undernourished, and street smart. The oldest is Pola, with her rare graduate school education in the Great Lakes area—fearless, devoted to science, and wealthy. Between Ines’ and Pola’s ages is Ply’s main character, "the pincher.” The pincher is the daughter of a beloved especially clever tinker. After her mother died, the pincher, still a child, eventually apprenticed with a renowned tinker, even wearing the tinker smock and shaved head, transforming herself into a near novitiate nun-like figure of adoration. After following her lover out of three years of apprenticeship, the pincher teaches herself to “pinch” electricity from Tensor’s private electrical lines and charge “bricks” (batteries). The pincher, as clever as her mother, invents a new and more powerful type of brick: ”Not too long ago, I designed a new kind of unit. It holds the equivalent of about forty normal bricks. Instead of a lot of small, quick pinches that would require going all over town with cumbersome equipment, my brick needs just one slow pinch. It’s merely double the size of the average unit, which means I can take it to a venue in a backpack or use it to recharge dozens of normal batteries in the safety of my workshop. Because it’s so powerful, it charges at a low rate to make it as stealthy as possible. The draw is much longer than when using a standard brick. Slower by a few factors, yes, but completely undetectable.” Using her new super-brick, the pincher earns her living by powering concerts by her favorite bands, the Children and Polit Bureau.

The pincher, Pola, and Ines form an intergenerational triad of powerful women living together and supporting each other. Pola seeks to advance science and the pincher invents her new and more powerful brick. Both Pola and the pincher draw the attention of the rich and criminal. Any more said will ruin your own reading of Ply.

Diaz presents a multilayered dystopia, including different strands of its evolving political and social philosophy. The pincher’s mother, for example, believed that ”the gradual dissolution of the city and all bonds that had once sustained it was a lovely sight. Slowly and often despite ourselves, we were learning how to be somebody else. The fall of the technological order was the next step in this new direction. Humans. . . had an insatiable desire for comfort. She believed the aim of all work had always been an end to work. Minimizing effort. . . Undisturbed rest was the ultimate goal. To be as close to death in life as possible.”

Diaz has written three exceptional novels: In the Distance (2017), Trust (2013), and now Ply (2026). Diaz’ novels are distinct from each other in time, place, and concerns. But three threads unite Diaz’ novels. First, Ply, Trust, and In the Distance are all formidable works of pure imagining. Second, the three novels all deal with visions of the past and future of the United States. Third, detail and precision mark Diaz’ three novels: precision in his characters and their personalities and traits, detail in his historical and future vision, and exactitude in his descriptions of topography, buildings, and physical states.

Hernan Diaz’ Ply is a masterful far future dystopian novel, in which Hernan Diaz intimately interweaves dystopia with the plot and the characters. I can’t imagine the characters or plot apart from the dystopia. Ply’s dystopia not just layered onto the plot and characters, but is inherent to them. Ply is among best novels I’ve read in 2026 and among best dystopian novels I’ve ever read. The 2026 Booker Prize longlist contains no fewer than five novels worthy of winning. If Ply had been longlisted, it would be a formidable candidate for winning the Booker Prize as well.

Five stars

I would like to thank NetGalley and Riverhead Books for allowing me access to this excellent novel.

[Stacy]

Ply left me in a state of such amazement, emotional and intellectual overwhelm, and bewilderment, that upon finishing I immediately returned to page one and began again. What a phenomenal, ambitious novel. A lot to process, a lot to take in. Diaz’s world-building is excellent; the future feels so thoughtfully considered: neither dystopian nor utopian, but something more nuanced and realistic, where currency and property and institutions have crumbled and nature and artistry, either technical or musical, have taken their place as stable forces in an increasingly unstable society. Upon first read, I had a difficult time reconciling the present pincher and the past pincher, the scenes in the past with her mother were a joy to read but something about the present felt off, not wrong but uncannily contrived, like he was reaching for some new iteration of what a novel was, which made the narrative that much more propulsive, and upon finishing, everything about the way I felt reading it made sense. What Diaz does narratively in the last section of the book left me absolutely breathless; the last few chapters were an extraordinary formal and philosophical exploration of the nature of self and society, and what it means to navigate a shifting social and technological reality. I don’t think every bit of plot and science has to be understood immediately for this to be a remarkably rewarding reading experience. Once again, Hernan Diaz has taken the novel in a new direction, and Ply is one that will beg to be re-read time and time again.

Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead for a chance to read my fall's most anticipated novel.

[Ruben]

A slow burner, but perseverance pays off!

I have been a Hernan Diaz fan since his debut 'In the Distance', so 'Ply' was one of my most anticipated books for this year.

The novel is set in a dystopian New York (I think), some centuries in the future. Humankind is not doing well - there is still electricity and water, but that's about it. Lawlessness rules and the absence of health care means life expectancy has dropped dramatically. And yet, the world is still full of meaningful friendships and good bands perform at impromptu concerts across the city.

Our main character is a so-called 'pincher' - she illegally taps into the power grid to charge her 'bricks' (batteries) to then power the concerts.

When she designs a new type of brick, it draws the attention of some wealthy and mysterious folks that may be secretly running the city.

All of this is explained in the first half of the book, Part 1, which sets everything up for Part 2. It is long and I can see people giving up. In that sense it reminded me of the equally plot-driven Birnam Wood where the second half was a big reward for a slow start.

Part 2 is very different and the novel develops in unexpected ways. Let's just say that if you like Carlo Rovelli or are interested in the work of CERN you'll be catered for.

It became a real pageturner for me at the end and everything from Part 1 comes back to make sense.

I am very glad I didn't give up - Diaz remains a top favourite, and I love his versatility.

Many thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[CJ Alberts]

This was my most anticipated book of 2026 and I’m very sad to say I didn’t love it. I’m a Hernan head and I’m just unsure what he was doing here. A very beautiful last 15 pages of a 400 page long book that unfortunately felt like a build up to nothing. Really sad about this one

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Without the aid of a single screw or wire, Wakefield managed to build a machine that resembles Pola’s. The pincher remembers the scientist’s words about timelines bifurcating or conjoining by design. Accessing potential worlds. This is what Wakefield’s experiment has achieved: He exists simultaneously in one reality for his wife (on a business trip, possibly getting ill or hurt, dying, remaining in her mind as a memory) and in another one of his own, in his apartment, one block away (aging, in dis‑ guise, guilt ridden, lurking). In one timeline, his existence has ended; in the other, it continues. He has unfolded. “Wakefield is another man.” Yet the same. Wakefield, the pincher thinks for a moment, beat Pola by several centuries.

 
Argentinian-American author Hernan Diaz’s first novel “In The Distance” (2017) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (and received a range of other prize nominations) and his second novel “Trust” (2022) went one better – winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 after its longlisting for the Booker Prize in 2022.
 
I had mixed views on the latter (which I read a couple of months before its Booker longlisting and which I eventually rated #12/13 on the longlist) and which I summarised as a tale which bridges two cultures (art/literature and high finance), but which is very much a book of two halves (the first almost deliberately weak, the second intriguing) and which left me in two minds (4*+ concept and a 2* execution).
 
I admired the way in which it explicitly aimed to provide a literary exploration of capital, investment and banking; I also liked the author’s idea of deconstructing one of the foundational myths/narratives of American society (the role of free market capitalism and the investment markets and particularly the self-made wealthy entrepreneur) in the same way that his first novel “In The Distance” did with the Western.  However, the opening two sections – both pastiches – were almost deliberately weak and I think the novel would have been better served alternating the four sections.
 
This is his third novel – and sure to be a contender for literary prizes given his reputation – and he has taken his genre borrowing from Western to early 20thcentury fiction (and business hagiography) to now dystopian science fiction – and started from the premise that the American society has deconstructed itself.
 
Set some 500 years in the future (as we know as it takes place around 1000 years post Renaissance), what is referred to as the modern era (our era) has come to an end with the dissolution of democratic states, social mobility – due to an elite caste, legal systems and the primacy of the “human” in a world of devices (note though that neither AI or really climate change are particularly pertinent to the world being described or to the end of ours) leading to .   
 
In the American failed City-state in which the novel is set a few decades earlier, a period of incipient revolutionary uprising which aimed to bring back into some form of public ownership water and energy and revive education and public health (*) a violent counter-revolutionary Suppression ensued and now the even more failed City state (life expectancy is low due to a lack of basic antibiotics, birth rate has plummeted for unclear reasons) and the streets are largely chaotic and uncontrolled although with a for-hire private firm CTS having a monopoly on security and another Tensor a monopoly on electricity distribution.
 
(*) it has to be said that it was rather apposite reading the book on the day of Andy Burnham’s own speech setting out how manifesto for his own coup – for example “a shared plan began to take shape; They would take an alliance to take the water supply system (Flow) and the central power station (Tensor). While distributing these resources fairly among citizens, the recapture would also wipe out the last two remaining strongholds where the remains of political and financial power were intertwined and consolidated”
 
Both CTS and Tensor are therefore the biggest dangers to our unnamed (in Part One first section) first party narrator, daughter of an underground bookseller father (who disappeared in the suppression) and ex-commune living junk-workshop tinkerer and trader Mother (who died of cancer when the narrator was still pre-teenage).  After a period – her back story is mixed throughout the current action  - living with one of her Mother’s customers (which ended up with her finger being broken when his family come to claim him from his drug addiction) and then apprenticed to one of her suppliers – she works as a pincher : effectively stealing money from illegal intercepts on Tensor power lines (something she got into with her now dead-of-infection female partner) and charging up bricks which act as a form of currency and can be traded to those who need power – in particular (and a passion of the narrator) music concerts. 
 
Now however she has invented a new brick with a huge storage capacity and which is also charged over time (which while therefore needing concealing does avoid the rapid and telltale Tensor alerting quick charges of a conventional brick) – a brick which interests her power broker – an ex-Balkan Anton but even more so the mysterious attentions of an unknown stalker who as a gesture of goodwill offers two hugely valuable brick components, and then (either she suspects when most paranoid due to Anton’s attempts to sell her invention, or simply due to his enquiries as to who the mystery person might be) two warring crime bosses both of whom want to but the new brick (and see it as less a request than an order).
 
Many elements of this Part One are promising although I could not help feel that while my brother’s succinct summary of the early pastiche parts of “Trust” (“barely a word is not wasted) may be a little harsh here, that the worldbuilding, the back story, the current day action around the new brick and particularly the narrator’s interactions with a number of her favourite musicians (and the rather baffling explanations of their music) and with a musical influencer
 
Part Two of the novel – which occurs just after the pincher (and note that this section switches to the second person – which becomes more key later in the novel) meets the mysterious follower – who turns out to be an elderly lady (especially by the standards of the City) Pola who wants the pincher to steal the entire power of the City’s grid.  Pola it turns out is a brilliant if maverick scientist originally from the Great Lakes (which ceded from the States years ago and still have a functioning society) but now living in a ramshackle but amazingly equipped scientific laboratory/factory in the City – having rejected the overtures of her business focused ex-partner in the Lakes.   
 
In turn for giving the pincher access both to her own genius (Pola is far from modest) and supplies from the Great Lakes, she wants the pincher to use street smarts and improvisation to steal all the City’s power to help Pola power up a scientific experiment she is close to perfecting – which in effect produces a much smaller but also more powerful particle collider: think the Large Hadron collider but both shrunk to the size of a small room, and so powerful that it can get in effect to the strings of string theory, to the very scale at which time no longer has meaning and which is almost the other side of space.
 
If that last explanation sounds like a mash up of Carlo Rovelli and some rather hand waving pseuo-science then that would be a fairly accurate description of this part of the novel – which all too often involves Pola’s lengthy expositions of what does seem to be real science but which sits oddly in the novel. 
 
And things take an even odder turn as she seems convinced her experiments will almost immediately change the course of history (in fact – by revealing the level at which entropy no longer exists thus meaning that time’s associated arrow no longer exists – remove the concept of history).
 
There are some really nice though.  My favourite perhaps relates to when the pincher tries to research a little of Pola’s work and the nature of the machine she calls “Mr Wakefield” (actually a real life term relating to plasma wakefield accelerators which just as Pola describes create waves which injected particles effectively surf) and comes across Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 19th century short story Wakefield and draws clever parallels to Pola’s quest.
 
Woven through the strings (pun intended) of the science are both: some action scenes as the pincher and Aaron come up with a plot to simultaneously scam the crime bosses while getting them to take actions against CTS and Tensor that will act as cover for the city-grid-level super-pinch; a tentative but guarded and often spiky friendship which develops between Pola and the pincher (Pola for example unable to avoid condescension but also critical of what she sees as the selfishness, stuff-accumulating world view of the pincher) - and then a three way three generation relationship between both and a young orphan girl (and seeming abuse survivor)
 
And when the trio finally are able to start their experiment it results in an incident which suddenly makes sense of the change in person in the first two sections as the narrative then switches to a blurred voice and almost merged/multi-identity due, which then plays out against the repercussions of both Anton/the pincher’s scam on the two crime bosses and Pola’s break with her partner – and what overall is perhaps too mystical an ending for me, if one clearly in keeping with many of the novel’s ideas.
 
Overall this really was without doubt an intelligent and distinctive novel – but one that was not really successful for me.
 
My thanks to Picador for an ARC via NetGalley
 

Slowly, like something hesitatingly emerging from nothing, the disk comes into view. The pincher gets closer. Hard to put into words what I see when I’m only a few steps away. An impossible space taking place. A convex concavity seen from every possible point of view. And it sees me from every possible point of view. And I see it seeing me from every possible point of view. And it and I simultaneously create and negate one another anew in each one of these infinite acts of reciprocal recognition. And all there is is all these endless anews that somehow don’t follow one another.

[Nancy]

We are nothing but a constant becoming that results from the ceaseless interplay of particles and forces. from Ply by Hernan Diaz

This is a stunner of a novel, a high concept work of speculative fiction set in a future post-collapse world. Set i a decaying city far from the continued civilization of the Lakes, it is a world of haves and have nots. A world where ‘pinchers’ steal energy they store in ‘bricks” and sold on the black market. A world where children grow up alone on the streets.

We meet a woman living by her wits, a tinker who repurposes ancient trash into useable devices, and who has invented a brick of small size but with a huge energy capacity. People want her technology. One is Pola, a rare elderly woman who seeks to prove her theory of time/space and needs a huge energy source. She enlists the pincher to help with her project. A third is added to their family when an orphan girl, Inez, shows up on their doorstep.

Pola’s deep dive into physics to explain her theory made my eyes glaze over; did I really need to follow and understand it? I decided I did not, but more techy minds will relish it.

Diaz crafts his world with great care and insight, creating a probable and unsettling vision of the future.

The pincher found a makeshift family, for a time, and glories in the bands and music her bricks fuel, crowds dancing in the dark to primal rhythms.

There was a freedom in dissolution, joy in disorder. from Ply by Hernan Diaz

The writing, of course, is stellar. The concept original and well developed. I felt the earlier part was slow going and I did not enjoy the long exposition explaining Pola’s experiment. But, then the tension and suspense had me turning pages to the startling end.

Thanks to Riverhead Books for a free book through NetGalley.

[Matthew Ted]

Reached p. 280. Although Ply has an interesting set-up and premise: the concept of 'pinching' electricity in a future some 500 years from now, a future resembling, at times, Ballard's The Drowned World, I found myself gradually losing interest as I read on. By page 280, I had lost all desire to read on. Diaz is a good writer (I thought Trust was decent) but I just wasn't bothered about the story he was trying to tell. Everything felt quite slow, exposition-heavy. I didn't care about 'the pincher' or, terribly, what happened to her. The alternating chapters in Part One, between present and flashback, just began to annoy me with their rhythm and I don't think the choice to swap to third person in Part Two was a great idea, but then again, I'm sure there is a reason for it, only I didn't get to that realisation. In a nutshell, just not my cup of tea. I would hate to turn people off this by my opinions, as I'm sure many will love it.

[Paul Godwin]

I went into Ply completely blind. I knew Hernan Díaz’s “Trust” was highly regarded, but when this advance copy became available I decided to read this first. I’m very glad I did. This is one of the most thought-provoking novels I’ve read in years.

If you’re anything like me, don’t be put off by the science fiction label. I don’t generally read hard science fiction and have struggled with books such as The Three-Body Problem, where the science often overwhelmed the humanity. Ply is the exact opposite. This is, for me, a philosophical novel dressed in the clothes of science fiction rather than a science fiction novel with philosophical ideas attached. I’d encourage anyone unsure after the opening chapters to stay with it. The novel gradually reveals itself to be something rather different from what it first appears.

The futuristic setting, the mysteries surrounding the world, the strange technologies and the quantum ideas are all fascinating, but they aren’t really the point. They exist to explore much bigger questions. What is matter? What are our bodies? What, ultimately, makes us who we are? If everything ultimately exists only at the quantum level, what does individuality even mean?

I don’t pretend to have understood every scientific concept Díaz introduces. In fact, one of the pleasures of the novel is that discovering the science becomes part of the reading experience. I’ve found myself reading Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics alongside it simply because Ply made me want to understand more about quantum mechanics, spacetime and the nature of reality. I honestly can’t remember another novel that has made quantum physics feel so exciting, so involving and so emotionally important.

Yet remarkably, none of this ever loses sight of the human story.

At its heart, this is the Pincher’s journey towards understanding herself. Throughout the novel she defines herself almost entirely through her relationships with others: as a daughter, an apprentice, a colleague, a business partner, a lover, a friend, a mentor and, eventually, almost a mother. Even late in the novel she describes herself as little more than a transitional stage between Ines and Pola, still understanding herself in relation to someone else.

Pola offers an entirely different vision of identity: that we are not separate beings connected to one another but part of one another, part of the Earth, part of the Sun, part of the universe itself. That tension between relational identity and universal identity lies at the heart of the novel.

Even on a more everyday level, Díaz keeps returning to the idea that our truest selves emerge when we lose ourselves completely in what we’re doing. The Pincher is at her happiest when absorbed in a task, disappearing into work, music or purpose. It reminded me of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of “flow”, where identity almost dissolves into complete immersion. Again and again the novel asks whether the self is something fixed or something continually created through our relationships, our work and our attention.

One moment near the end brilliantly captures this collapse of ordinary ideas about identity. The narration quietly shifts from third person into first person without warning, as the Pincher’s perception of herself and the world begins to dissolve. It’s one of several moments where the very form of the novel reflects the philosophical questions it’s asking.

The line that has stayed with me more than any other comes towards the end:

“Endless anews that didn’t follow one another.”

Taken on its own, the line is wonderfully enigmatic. Within the novel, it became one of the moments that stayed with me longest.

For all its philosophical ambition, this is never a dry intellectual exercise. It’s genuinely funny in places, full of warmth, full of memorable relationships, and surprisingly moving. Music runs through the novel as an expression of individuality that survives almost everything. People still seek companionship, hold parties, fall in love, form friendships and create art. In the face of extraordinary circumstances, humanity stubbornly remains human. That, more than anything, gives the novel its hope.

At times the city itself reminded me of Calvino’s Invisible Cities, where the place becomes as much an expression of consciousness as a physical location. I’d happily recommend reading the two alongside one another.

Can you simply read Ply as a thriller? Yes, absolutely. The mystery is compelling, the pacing excellent and the ending dramatic and deeply satisfying. But if you’re prepared to engage with the novel’s questions about consciousness, matter, identity and what it actually means to exist, you’ll discover something far richer.

Rarely has a novel left me feeling that my relationship with the universe itself has subtly changed. I certainly didn’t leave with all the answers, but I did leave thinking differently about time, reality and what it means to be a person. Very few novels can honestly claim to have done that.

This won’t be my last Hernan Díaz novel. Trust has just moved very near the top of my reading pile.

My thanks to NetGalley, Pan Macmillan and Picador for providing an advance review copy. As always, these are my own honest thoughts.

[Joy D]

Ply is set in a dystopian far future United States. The unnamed protagonist is a pincher, who siphons electrical power off the grid and sells or trades it to survive. She also supplies battery power to run amplifiers for the live music acts she admires.

The book is structured in two parts. The first is her origin story, including what happened to her parents and how she became a pincher. The second pulls her into an experiment run by a brilliant scientist chasing a breakthrough in our understanding of space-time. Part one is told in first person, and part two switches to close third. Toward the end Diaz blends perspectives in ways that tie directly to the scientist's experiments. It takes real skill to pull this off.

The world building is strong here. It is an all too visualizable version of where we are headed if we keep going the same direction. Diaz put me inside this future and gave me a visceral sense of what it would take to survive in such a place. I especially loved the multi-generational found family.

The last stretch moves faster than I expected. The primary drawback comes in the second half, which ventures a bit too far into quantum theory and loses momentum. The upside is that Diaz puts complex concepts into terms a casual reader can grasp.

Diaz is one of my favorite authors. Reading Ply after In the Distance and Trust shows his versatility. I can always count on him for captivating characters, striking prose, and engaging storytelling. Ply delivers all three.

Many thanks to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader's copy. This book is scheduled for release on September 29, 2026.

[Amber]

thank you to Riverhead books for the gifted ARC. This was a phenomenal read

Here are my rambling thoughts ⬇️

- I LOVED this book but it might not be for everyone!

- while there’s quite a lot of hard science, the examination of one’s identity — especially how that *relates* to one another — is brilliantly explored

- I especially love how Diaz incorporated narrative shifts (esp in the second half of the book) to explore the boundaries of selfhood & selfishness

- I actually was ambivalent about the book until halfway, started liking it at 75%, loved it in the end, and absolutely loved it when I immediate reread parts of the book

- describing PLY this way somehow cheapens the book, but forgive me for not having more eloquent words for now. I love the central thesis of how we’re all connected in a world that’s ending. And how that connection could inspire us to create a new & better reality

- the ‘odd’ writing is very deliberate and won’t make sense until the last 20% of the book. And upon rereading some earlier sections of PLY that annoyed me a bit, I could recognize (or maybe *observe* is a better word) why Diaz made those stylistic choices — and it was such a meta experience when feeling like I’m in sync with the author (or I might just be delusional. Who knows 🤣). I’d only recommend PLY to people who are more or less committed to finishing the whole book

- this is the type of literary sci fi that I love! there’s great writing & extremely nerdy science that requires a writer to engage in lots of research and understanding of science. And the two elements blended so well together! Neither the writing or science overshadowed the other. I’m absolutely blown away by how much detailed quantum physics Diaz incorporated into PLY, while keeping the momentum throughout

- it’s rare that a book makes me excited about reading more on physics, and PLY did that so exceptionally well. while I don’t think one has to be an expert in quantum physics to enjoy PLY — Diaz actually does a phenomenal job explaining the science — I think having some prior knowledge on some of these topics will really help appreciate the Easter eggs in the book!

- some rabbit holes I went down after finishing the book
- quantum entanglement
- wave function collapse
- Schrödinger’s cat (there’s a specific scene in the book that’s actually quite sad)

- there were some things I wish PLY would’ve done differently
- the world building in the first half felt a bit too long. While it created a lot of interesting interpretations after finishing the book, I feel like the length and writing style might alienate a lot of readers who are seeking a faster-paced experience (or a narrator that reveals themselves a bit more, but i think that’s more of a deliberate choice)
- the ending felt a tad rushed. Even though it was already >450 pages, the last 10 pages flew by. I wish there were 50 more to smooth out some things. But maybe it’s just because I didn’t want to let the character(s) go 😆

[Vince]

Hernan Diaz’s vision of the future is far more believable and philosophical than I expected.

I’m still processing my ARC of Ply. Diaz presents a future version of a familiar metropolis with subtle world-building. He never explicitly names the city, so it takes a moment to realize where you are, but once it clicks the setting becomes immersive. The narrator treats her surroundings as normal, even though life there is harsh compared to wealthier regions like the Great Lakes.

Energy almost functions as currency. The city’s power grid is controlled by a massive company called Tensor, and stealing electricity is illegal. The narrator survives as a “pincher,” siphoning power and compressing it into portable bricks. She’s also a skilled tinkerer, constantly modifying and repurposing technology to get by. Tensor and a private police force dominate the city, creating a world where corporations have essentially replaced government.

Part one establishes the narrator as a resilient figure navigating this environment on her own terms. She often finds support from people around her, yet she also has a tendency to complicate or sever those relationships. That tension makes her a compelling character whose flaws feel like an authentic product of the world she lives in.

Part two takes an unexpected turn into high-concept science and physics, briefly feeling like something out of a Blake Crouch novel, but with Diaz’s more philosophical approach to the ideas. I got a little lost in the technical descriptions, but grounding the science adds an intriguing layer to the story. Her relationships with Sola and Ines were a highlight.

One of the most impressive stylistic choices comes near the end, when Diaz shifts the narrative voice. The change is initially shocking and disorienting, but it ultimately pulls you deeper into the narrator’s mind and serves the story perfectly.

I wish we saw even more of the underground music scene, which perfectly captures the energy of 70s New York punk. Even so, the ending is wild and philosophical, and the novel feels both speculative and believable.

I received a physical ARC of Ply from a colleague who attended Winter Institute 2026.

[Stephanie (aka WW)]

(4.5 stars) The opening to Ply introduces Diaz’s imagined future and to the unnamed main character, a young female. The time is 400 or 500 years in the future. There is no government, the final act a literal Suppression of anyone thought to be subversive (including the pincher’s father…spirited away in the middle of the night). The main character – the pincher – is self-employed at “pinching” electricity from the power grid, creating “blocks” that she uses to help power others’ musical and artistic endeavors. She lives on her own across a river that few dare cross, and traces and re-traces her paths throughout the city, paranoid of being watched.

The pincher’s past is divulged as a series of flashbacks. One after another, Suppression and death have conspired to leave her an orphan, not just in terms of parents, but also of mentors and close friends. To survive, the pincher has learned to trust only herself, not realizing how isolated and separate she has become. Then she meets Pola, an older woman, who envisions a scientific breakthrough that may change reality itself. Pola needs the pincher’s expertise to power her technological configuration.

The final third of Ply is a rush. The women hurry toward their breakthrough even as powerful forces of the time converge on them. There is a lot of science for Diaz to convey and, while I didn’t completely understand all of it, I never felt lost. Along with the technical details, there is a subtle (then not so subtle) shift in the narrative. It’s something that creeps up on the reader until it is undeniable. The result is unsettling. Diaz has achieved something here that leaves the reader (at least me) breathless. I own his Pulitzer-Prize winning novel Trust, but have never read it. That will have to change with my newfound respect for his literary powers.

If, like me, you love a read that challenges both intellectually and emotionally, I highly recommend Ply. It’s one of my most memorable recent reading experiences.

Much thanks to NetGalley and Riverhead Books for allowing me to review this book prior to publication, which is set for September 29, 2026.

[Sara]

Ply
yr music at idianity
its not orfan art of underground
or stel thunders from time
or drama sesson of earth
its float claud
return wend
far grief
grid sad
love and hate
its my music
name it by light
surviv fight
me whole
ply

[Books Before Bs]

I love grungy, futuristic dystopian thrillers, so the synopsis of Hernan Diaz's latest novel, ‘Ply’, immediately piqued my interest. The novel opens strongly, with clean, evocative prose conjuring a vivid portrait of a collapsed America several hundred years in the future, where energy has become a scarce and fiercely contested resource. The world-building is superb, and the concept of "pinching"—illegally siphoning electricity from the grid to sell on the black market—is particularly compelling. I was quickly drawn into the setting, eager to learn more about this fractured society.

Unfortunately, the unnamed pincher proves far less compelling than the world she inhabits. Despite the novel's preoccupation with questions of identity and selfhood, she remains frustratingly opaque; her motivations, desires, and inner life never fully come into focus. Matters are compounded when Diaz abandons the intimacy of the first-person voice in favour of a detached third-person perspective. The shift is clearly intended to reinforce the novel's exploration of identity, but intellectually defensible choices are not always dramatically successful. Here, the effect is to distance the reader from the protagonist at precisely the moment greater emotional investment is needed. Later, the narrative begins oscillating between first and third person—sometimes within the same paragraph—in a way that feels jarring rather than purposeful, much like the novel's inconsistent handling of tense.

The novel's conceptual ambitions ultimately overwhelm its storytelling. Plot and characterisation are both underdeveloped, leaving too few stakes to generate genuine investment. Characters frequently disappear into extended philosophical and scientific monologues that stall the narrative rather than deepen it, often feeling more like vehicles for the novel's ideas than fully realised people. I found myself increasingly wishing for the discussions to end, for the pace to quicken, and for the story promised by the opening chapters to reassert itself. It never quite does.

For me, ‘Ply’ is at its most engaging when it follows the pincher and her role within the underground music scene. Once the physicist enters the narrative, the focus shifts away from lived experience towards abstract theorising, and much of the novel's early momentum is lost. Were I inclined to abandon books midway through, this is where I would have stopped reading. Even so, I persevered in the hope that the ending would pull its various threads together more convincingly, but I found the conclusion no more satisfying than what had come before.

Ultimately, ‘Ply’ left me disappointed not because its ideas lack ambition, but because they come at the expense of compelling characters and an engaging story. Its imaginative world and intriguing premise deserve a narrative with greater emotional weight and dramatic momentum.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Hernan Diaz, and Picador for the ARC.

⚠️ Death of parent, death, grief, injury detail, fire injury, murder, drug use, drug abuse

[Sue]

Some books tell you a story.

Others quietly change the way you see the world.

Ply is one of those rare novels.

I started this book trying to figure out who everyone was and where the story was going. By the end, I wasn’t thinking about the plot anymore. I was thinking about identity, consciousness, friendship, sacrifice… and one small word that completely changed the way I understood the ending.

This isn’t a book to rush. It asks you to slow down, reread passages, and become comfortable with uncertainty. Every conversation feels intentional, every relationship matters, and every page draws you a little deeper into questions that don’t have easy answers.

At its heart, Ply is a novel about transformation—how people change, how love and loyalty evolve, and how even our understanding of “home” can shift.

I finished this book with more questions than answers… and for the first time in a long while, I didn’t mind that at all.

If you enjoy literary fiction that trusts its readers and invites you to think long after you’ve closed the cover, I highly recommend Ply.

Thank you to the Riverhead Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advance copy.

[Violet]

I really, really liked this novel. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was overall a great story. We follow "the pincher", a young girl growing up in a post-apocalyptic city in what used to be, about 200 years prior, the United States. She is a "pincher" who steals electricity from the powerful corporation that controls the city and its energy supply, having changed career after working as a tinker with her mother, repairing everyday objects for a bit of cash. We follow her from one adventure to the next, powering concerts for free to satisfy her love of live music, moving from one shelter to another with her group of friends... until she starts working with a crazy scientist, Pola, on a daring experiment.

This is the part where it lost me a bit - the first half of the book had great world building, really interesting (if somewhat myserious) characters, like the heroine's mother and her friends, and I thoroughly enjoyed that part, the city and the solar punk vibes, nature reclaiming the space, everyone having big dreams about technology, the heroine's time with monkish Acevedo, learning to repair things and leading a quiet, disciplined life. But then we enter the part where the pincher is with Pola, and Hernan Diaz tries really hard to convince us of the scientific project... Too hard to my taste. I didn't really enjoy pages and pages and pages about spacetime and neutrons and atomic power and vibrations, and electricity and all. I think keeping it vague would have been just fine.

So that part felt a bit dull and a bit long... It was a shame because the plot itself was efficient - simple but pretty good - and I liked the characters, Pola especially was really interesting, the secondary characters (Anton in particular) were really likeable as well. The pace picked up during the last quarter of the book, I would have liked a bit more meat at the end of the novel, but there was a clever writing trick (no spoiler, so I will say no more) which I thought was smart.

Overall, a really, really good novel despite some slower parts.

Free ARC sent by Netgalley.

[Kip Kyburz]

An extremely plot heavy novel for Mr. Diaz which often pays off but even more so if you have been keeping up with recent releases by Carlo Rovelli. The world is interesting but the "dystopia" as it were, is more backdrop than character. The world has crumbled, creating a unique society, but we are centuries in the future from cataclysm and there are no revolutionaries or freedom fighters yearning against a powerful state apparatus. Instead, we have a bit of worldbuilding, and then we flip to part 2, and the physics comes to the forefront. The latter half of this book is extremely high-minded, few barriers slow our characters down except the limits of their own understandings. There are setbacks and tragedies, but ultimately, we are left with one glowing moment, and then our own interpretations.

[Marc Nash]

Video review https://youtu.be/COVxt3CD_tU

Do disappointing after "Trust". This is just plot-driven dystopia with clunky character work. Has some really interesting BIG ideas, but they get swallowed by the plot

[Orla]

4.5 stars rounded down because of some pace issues.
Ply starts off slow and gradually increases in both pace and intensity, much like the mysterious machine that becomes central to the plot.

In a far future city that has mostly rewilded itself due to a lack of humans, governed by private security goons and street gangs, all things are bartered for. As systems collapsed the things we take for granted (electricity, water, food) have become more scarce. The main character of Ply is a pincher, stealing electricity to charge bricks (high-capacity batteries) that are needed by those who cannot afford to hook into the grid. It's an outlaw life, and she has managed to operate under many radars thus far. But suddenly she can't shake off the feeling of being watched, and no matter how often her friend and business partner tells her she's being paranoid she knows it to be true.
Who is watching the pincher, and why, would be too much of a spoiler to explain.

Suffice it to say that you may want to dust off your knowledge of physics (there is an inveterate explainer of a character to help with that, which was a clever choice) and buckle in for a wild ride.

I truly don't know enough about physics or battery chemistry to know how possible some of the things in the book are, and maybe it's for the best that I don't. Far better to nod along and give into the force of the storytelling. I can say that the physics-heavy parts of the book never felt like homework to me, and I never found myself lost...until I was supposed to.

Thanks to PanMacmillan and NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Sarah Miller]

A secular cousin to The Parable of the Sower, Ply takes place in a new era, a post-post apocalyptic world of striving. Where Parable deals with the visceral terror of a world in decline and the spark of hope in a new religion, Ply plumbs the depths of human connection and the power of science and discovery to begin to remake the world- or move beyond it. These connections are explored through deep, beautiful, and sometimes overly complex musings on what it means to be human. It’s beautifully written, musically infused (I’ve never read a book that dives so completely into descriptions of what music sounds like!), and tightly focused on the captivating main character of “the pincher”. I was transported by the ways Diaz explores the redefining of humanity, questioning of reality, and the nature of self destruction. It’s just the right length for what it’s doing. A lesser author would have taken twice as long to say less. The way Diaz plays with narration is masterful. An engrossing read I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

Thank you to Riverhead for the NetGalley advanced copy!