Meanwhile in Dopamine City

by D.B.C. Pierre

Dopamine City is the story of Lonny Cush, sanitation worker and single parent, kind-hearted and red-blooded, who is trying his best to protect his kids from the hysterical hyper-reality of 21st century life.

He lives in an unnamed fictional world city, dominated by a huge tech company akin to Google. A manual worker - although he has been put forward for 'retraining', a euphemism for redundancy - Lonny is out of sync with the changes in his hometown and his century, and doesn't have the means to give his quiet teenage son Egan and his precocious, ultra-demanding nine-year-old daughter Shelby (one of the most memorably awful children in literature!) what they need, or say they need. But with his mother-in-law circling for custody, and needing to win back his kids' favour after he maybe went too far in discipling Shelby, he succumbs, splashing out on the thing Shelby wants more than anything else: her first smartphone.

And so begins the silken silence as she drifts off to her room and down the rabbit hole of memes, trolls, hysteria and peer-pressure, and the true, vertiginous terrors of 21st-century life start flooding into the Cush household. And what should Lonny do? Rescue her or follow her? Because who is right: Lonny, or the world he and everybody else is living in now?

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Australia, Dystopia, Speculative Fiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published August 6, 2020

About the author

DBC Pierre is an Australian-born writer currently residing in Ireland. Born Peter Warren Finlay, the "DBC" stands for "Dirty But Clean". "Pierre" was a nickname bestowed on him by childhood friends after a cartoon character of that name.

Pierre was awarded the Booker Prize for fiction on 14 October 2003 for his novel Vernon God Little.

He is the third Australian to be so honoured, although he has told the British press that he prefers to consider himself a Mexican.

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 1 out of 5]

"This novel starts off annoying in one way, becomes annoying in a whole other way, and ends up as probably the most annoying book of 2020" - Guardian review

Dirty But Clean Pierre's Vernon God Little was, in rankings produced by Booker followers on the Mookse & Gripes forum, voted not just the worst winner of the Booker Prize, but the worst book of the 495 ever featured in the short- or longlists, based on the most negative over positive ratings (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...)

And on an otherwise impressive 2020 Goldsmiths shortlist, his latest, Meanwhile in Dopamine City, is another unfortunate aberration.

The choice is particularly unfortunate when another, far more worthy novel, had already been published using this book's main innovation, but was overlooked for the prize. As the author of the latter noted (https://twitter.com/meenakandasamy/st...

"So, Exquisite Cadavers divides the pages of the novel into two columns to mimic how life influences fiction. It came out in Nov 2019. DVC Pierre’s novel came out in Aug 2020. When white guy innovates it gets shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. When brown woman does, sorry babe!"

But before we get to the, much more poorly executed, gimmick in Pierre's book we have to wade through the swamp. The novel starts off as unfortunately it means to go on:

She looked like a sawn-off tramp. The day was going from bad to ratshit but this was one thing he would fix. A tramp and he couldn't lie, there was a whiff of pride in his disgust that made it worse. Lon stood his gunk-spangled bags by the fence as she padded up the road on half tiptoes. She was barefoot.

She didn't see him, then she saw him.

`What can I smell,' he said. It wasn't a question; there was a scent, just not olfactory. A sight-smack of lip gloss, legs and lies.

`Don't be bizarre.' Now she dawdled. Her eyes were cuts in the beery light, the swimmy twilight. Sphinx moths were out.

`Smells troubley.' He blocked the gate.

That's the main character, Lon, talking about ... his 9 year-old daughter.

As the TLS review asks, "Is this the rich English prose that Lon fears we are in danger of losing, or is it part of Pierre’s satire? It is unclear, but I suspect it is meant to be the former."

I got rather lost in this first part of the novel as unfortunately I don't speak fluent Drivel, but as far as I can gather the plot involves Lon, no fan of mobile phones, falsely suspecting his primary school daughter of promiscuity, slapping her, getting reported to social services, and his punishment is that he is given a smartphone.

This is when the 'innovation' kicks in as the text then splits into two columns, the left-hand column progressing what laughably passes as the 'story' and the right-hand one mimicking a social media feed. As per the author (https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...) the right-hand column was originally designed to be an integral part of the story but writing that was a bit too much like hard work, so it is now able to be ignored:

My original draft actually meant to rewire your brain: those [right-hand] columns were completely relevant and you had to work out whether to read the whole left-hand side and go back, or whether to read left and right across every page, breaking the experience of the narrative. Now you can skim it or ignore it and stay on the left-hand column; that was an editorial suggestion which I think worked very well.

Actually my strong suggestion to readers is also to skim or ignore the left-hand column as well, which I found a rather effective technique to read the novel without losing too many brain cells in the process.

To enhance the device, the right-hand column is printed in ink which at times fades to illegibility - indeed I returned my first Kindle copy of the novel as I assumed there was an error. In retrospect, the error was printing any of the text in the novel so it could be read.

This font is apparently intended to replicate the idea of a social media feed. Except when I look at say Twitter, the Tweets are very clear and concise, so flicking down a page of Tweets I can actually absorb a lot of information and immediately spot the Tweet on which I want to click. Printing verbiage in a font one has to squint at to read actually has the exact opposite effect. Which I suspect that may explain why Jack Dorsey is a billionaire and DBC Pierre ummm isn't (https://www.theguardian.com/world/200...).

Perhaps the most telling comment in the Guardian interview with the author is this:

I love early 19th-century or 20th-century writing. Nuances were much more important and you could spend a sentence or two to absolutely describe a feeling. Now we’ve got, you know, the smiley face.

This is very much from the Will Self 'the novel is dead' school whereas in practice there are people who still write books with nuances in the 21st century (and readers whose read them) and there are five examples in the other novels on the Goldsmiths list.

Read them. Skim or ignore this.

0 stars rounded up to 1 as that's the lowest GR will allow.

[Meike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Now Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020
D. B. C. Pierre's Vernon God Little is one of the most controversial Booker winners ever, but I really loved this edgy novel about gun violence at schools, a book that is also, in a larger sense, a commentary on the state of the world (keyword: disaffection). And this new feat deals with alienation as well, this time brought about by the shift from the real to the digital world. Lon, an unemployed single father, struggles to provide for his kids, and when he finally gives in to his daughter's wish to own a cell phone, their lives and the narrative explode in parallel existences: Pierre uses columns at the side of the text to mirror the diversion via screens, bombarding us with different viewpoints and texts imitating web content of differing quality.

At first, this makes for an interesting experiment, a little like BBC's "Sherlock" tried to incorporate screened content in the moving image. But the book has 400 pages, and this is basically the one interesting thing about it. The stuff that is exhausting about the web is also exhausting on the page, and while this is exactly the effect that Pierre is going for, it doesn't exactly make for an interesting read. The narrative itself becomes less and less involving, also because the immersion is lost because of the inserted text blocks that may or may not be relevant or worth your time (again: Just like articles on the web).

And while there is certainly some truth about the dangers of the digital rabbit hole and the effects of the attention economy, a wholly negative outlook on the web is not exactly a nuanced approach. This prose is flashy (and I'm all for flashy prose), but not deep enough. Still, I will follow what this author does next: Pierre has quite some tricks up his sleeve, but this novel fell short for me.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith Prize, just like I absolutely do not predict in the comments under my review.

‘By six o’clock my local time a hundred million people had focused their wills on a pair of runaway children in preference to matters in their own lives. As a proxy for those matters, breeding value in their brains without the risks of real life. And those children are unknown to them. They would stay unknown if they lived for a thousand years. The chemistry being deployed is there to encourage us to wave at the postman, meet a stranger’s eyes – this is how it’s relevant. Whereas their angst-by-proxy via advertising platforms designed to exploit vulnerabilities in the brain is making users happy to intrude until they crush to dust the status quo of anyone involved in the story …..

‘Do not use the words free speech! Free speech I practise with you directly to promote a meeting of minds. This is not free. Every second an arm like a blade combs the surface of the earth for dopamine, yours and mine, our whims and arguments, our relationships with others, our attempts at love, our anger, our caring, to embezzle it as revenue for a dozen male college dropouts.’

The book is set in an unspecified country – much (if not most) of it reads like America but (as a hurricane reference makes obvious it clearly is not America) – may be this itself is a satirical comment on how the internet firms are remaking the world in their image.

The book starts with a just made unemployed sewerage worker Lon(nie) – he lives in a town dominated in all aspects by a Big Tech firm (the Octagon), and increasingly home to refugees fleeing an increasingly nuclearised war in the Middle East. He is the widowed (his wife having died of lupus) father of two children – most noticably (see below) a young daughter Shelby-Ann (whose age serves as effectively the punchline to the book’s opening and introduced a key theme of the book – the widening generation divide and the clear winners of that divide).

Having previously lost custody of Shelby to his mother-in-law and regained it, his slap of her in the first chapter threatens to lose custody again – although it becomes quickly clear to him and us that he has largely already lost her to an online world (“the grid”) that he has tried to prevent either she or he joining. In an attempt to stave off authority intervention, he buys her a phone and then realises that if he is to maintain any form of connection with her he will need to join her in that world.

And at the point when Lon finally decides that he needs to engage with the future, get a smartphone and join the grid, we are told

He opened both eyes.
Looked at the bedroom window.
Then at the screen.
One was real life.
The other was the future.
Or something.
One was here and now.
The other was – something else.
Information.
A binary life had started.

And from then on (apart from a couple of occasions when Lon decides to turn off his screen) our reading experience mirrors this. The page is divided in half

On the left we have a series of first party accounts (of varying lengths) many (and the longest) by Lon, but many by other characters (including: his mother-in-law, a childhood flame turned social worker, Shelby and her rival turned friend, some of Lon’s ex-colleagues: one a victim of an online pile-on, the other an overnight sensation, a key worker for the Octagon at the heart of their most advanced projects and an ageing academic reluctantly employed by them to stave off governmental intervention) - which advance the narrative at least partly conventionally.

On the right a series of grid articles – one per page – which largely match, and in many cases, neatly complement the narrative.

This effect works brilliantly – as a reader our eyes flicker from one side to the other – just as, of course, our real life experience is now divided with that of our phones. Perhaps even more cleverly, the right hand trail is easier on the concentration, more easily fulfilling, a quicker hit of reading pleasure – whereas the left hand side can feel convoluted and overly complicated.

The list of areas and ideas explored in the book - most of them simply satirical extrapolations (and not very far from the present day) of current trends, and some of which are more like running jokes, includes such things as: pregnancies induced from a discarded hotel tissues in a hotel room occupied by a single man; the abuse of menopausal halting drugs; a back lash against adults imposition of the artificial concept of childhood and a general advance of children’s rights and denigration of anyone over thirty; the use of vacuum cleaners to deal with infantile cellulite; Honeybeetox for pouty lips; a huge backlash against the insidious effects of beers; a social trust score taken to extremes; a backlash against medical expertise; confiscation of children’s phones ruled equivalent to isolation torture in POW camps; terrorist grooming of young girls; deliberately contracted gum disease to make teeth appear whiter by contrast; tigers as birthday party accessories; animal ear transplants for humans; overnight meme sensations; the replacement of conventional linear time with user-defined Quantum “Curlytime”; fennec fox fever; the rep(lication) of people from their selfies; and, my favourite – welders as sex symbols (displacing to third the current day winners).

The number of attractive foreign women listing welders as their top choice of partner for fun and marriage has topped nine thousand from just a handful of countries. Among respondents to the survey are more than two hundred pole dancers, as well as members of gymnastics and volleyball teams. Welders were once again the top pick over pattern-makers, actuaries, funeral technicians, glass installers and mechanics,

Whereas some of these ideas are used and discarded like the tissue (Pierre I think follows the “fail fast, fail often” Silicon valley mantra), some (a little like the used tissue) are pregnant with possibility and give birth to a whole series of other ideas. In the tissues case for example: Serviette roulette played by teens risking pregnancy, lawsuits about the ownership of DNA left by people in public establishments, identification of the tissue as a live weapon, men refusing to stay in hotels etc.

The book is a very long way from perfect. Too many story lines are simply left dangling – unexplored, unexplained or a little of both - weakest perhaps a rather bizarre late revelation about Lon’s neglected (both by Lon and the author) son Egan. And the book’s ending is decidedly bizarre. But as said above I think some of these flaws are very deliberate.

The author’s “Vernon God Little” was of course a Booker Prize winner in 2003. One of the judges commented 5 years later that “four of the other judges arrived at the longlist meeting convinced that DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little was one of the great masterpieces of the early 21st century”. Some of the reviewers I respect most on Goodreads hated the book – and a group whose members have read many (some all) of the winners, collectively rated it one of the 2-3 worse winners ever.

I can see many people really hating this book and many others using it to bemoan the falling standard of literary fiction over time – but as the book would say, that’s haners and declinists for you.

Consider me a DBCBae.

My thanks to Faber and Faber for an ARC via NetGalley.

[Hugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020

I have to admit that I was very surprised to see this book included on the Goldsmiths list - my only previous experience of reading Pierre was his Booker winner Vernon God Little, which is pretty near the bottom of my rankings of the Booker winners, largely because I couldn't empathise with its protagonist. So my expectations of this one started pretty low.

This book is another comic fantasy, set in a dystopian near future in which the values of social media have gained complete control of society. Its main protagonist Lon is a widowed father of two children who struggles to relate to his nine-year old daughter Shelby.

The first 100 pages or so are told fairly conventionally - in the first of many misunderstandings, Lon is angered when Shelby comes home wearing a wet bikini under her shirt and hits her during their argument. He also loses his job working in the sewers for the company that runs the town. He has no heroic qualities other than a determination to hold on to and look after his children.

After this introductory section, most of the book is told in a two column format, in which various characters tell their parts of the story in the main (left-hand) column, while the right hand column consists of social-media news snippets, in which some of the text is faded to light grey, leaving semi-random segments highlighted. Each of these snippets is given a number, and these numbers form a Fibonacci series, which is repeated in reverse in the second half. This is presumably the innovation that led the Goldsmiths judges to accept it, but it is very reminiscent of when Meena Kandasamy did to very different effect in her novella Exquisite Cadavers.

The world Lon inhabits gets ever more surreal as social media takes over society, and the details are richly imagined and often very funny. Pierre's targets are a little obvious but do seem very contemporary concerns. I did enjoy parts of the book, but overall it is too long and rather outstays its welcome.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do not use the words free speech! Free speech I practise with you directly to promote a meeting of the minds. This is not free. Every second an arm like a blade combs the surface of the earth for dopamine, yours and mine, our whims and arguments, our relationships with others, our attempts at love, our anger, our caring, to embezzle it as revenue for a dozen male college dropouts.

As a wickedly smart near-future speculative fiction, Meanwhile in Dopamine City feels like what The Circle wanted to be, and with a satirical snarky vibe (that works well to entertainingly expose the dangerous path we're all sleepwalking along), I was put in mind of David Foster Wallace and John Kennedy Toole. I have read D.B.C. Pierre before and I reckon this is his best work yet. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Good stuff in, bad shit out, don't let it mingle.

The above is Lonnie Cush's motto: As a recently laid-off sewer worker, Lonnie understands the necessity of separating the pure from the polluting, and as a single father with a dead wife and a mother-in-law longing for custody of his two kids, he works hard to protect his family from the societal forces (and particularly those online) that would seek to foul them. Soon after the book begins, Lonnie gives in to the pressure to buy his nine-year-old daughter her first smart phone, and as Shelby is nearly immediately put in the crosshairs of trolls, bodyshamers, and men with questionable intentions (she's nine), Lonnie finds himself ramping up his own online presence in order to understand this new world. In a format that sees the main narrative constantly interrupted by developing online stories – viral newsbites that demonstrate how petty groupthink becomes enforceable policy – D. B. C. Pierre doesn't make too big a leap from our present day to show how fast the world can change and how little control we as individuals might have over these changes.

Time and place remain unstated (I presume Lonnie's in the UK and generic names are given for other countries: the news reports on a war in “Al Qemen”, immigrants come from “San Uribe”) and this choice serves to remove specific political considerations and makes the story feel more universal. And so, while Lonnie's concerns focus us on the domestic, another storyline follows the hidden reality: the billionaire technocrats and their covert quest for the singularity – and world domination, delivered through cute memes and addictive apps – barreling along unchecked at the nearby Octagon facility. I do think that “Meanwhile in Dopamine City” is a lame title for this book, but much is made of our monkeyness and how easy it is to control humans through manipulating the chemicals in our brains. So states the chief wonk at the Octagon:

If the amount of memory a grand can buy is the only flying curve on a graph of the last seventy years – what government can now be surprised? Specovius lets his head roll: They thought it meant jetpacks and monorails. Now the old guard whimpers in bed at night, it can see the game's moved beyond tech, the brain's rewiring, the battle's gone to nature, to neurochemistry, influence. Name any human battleground, all are now battles for territories in the brain, and the armoury's the screen in your hand. Think of this: if you subtracted the empty space between atoms in all our brains, the mass of global intelligence would barely fill a shot glass. He serves his eyes like canapés – We hold that shot glass. That's what gives them the jitters. We own a shot glass containing the species, Baz.

Serving as a voice of reason at the Octagon, Dr. Roos (hired merely to lend gravitas to their project but the good professor quaintly believes she can influence outcomes with her knowledge and wisdom):

By six o'clock my local time a hundred million people had focused their wills on a pair of runaway children in preference to matters in their own lives. As a proxy for those matters, breeding value in their brains without the risks of real life. And those children are unknown to them. They would stay unknown if they lived for a thousand years. The chemistry being deployed is there to encourage us to wave at the postman, meet a stranger's eyes – this is how it's relevant. Whereas their angst-by-proxy via advertising platforms designed to exploit vulnerabilities in the brain is making users happy to intrude until they crush to dust the status quo of anyone involved in the story.

And through it all, good and sturdy Lonnie – forever more in tune with meatware than software – demonstrates that dopamine is best delivered through in-person contact, as when he gets a hug from his daughter after a fight:

She shuddered and sniffed at his sturdy neck, lips squashed aside, guyed by cords of spit. After a minute she burrowed a hand down his back and rubbed as if to comfort him. He closed his eyes as his brain sucked the drugs that resolve busted souls and forge wisdoms, that bring on a binge after bloodshed.

The tone is certainly satirical – events ramp up from absurd to surreal – and Pierre constantly throws in colourful imagery:

• Lon's headlights swung over the flat like a puke of bleach.

• The girl crossed her arms and huffed like a freckled boy's stepmother.

• A rattle comes to the door and I pump Shel's hand to raise her head as a bare-chested man with a tan opens up, a forty-something man with a gym membership that he only uses for biceps.

I liked this a lot – I would have found it funnier if it wasn't so scary, but I guess it's laugh or cry at this point – and while I'd rate this a 4.5, it's just barely missing the something that would make me round up. (Pierre might have been setting this up for a sequel or a series, and while that might explain some dangling bits, nonetheless, they dangle to my disappointment.)

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meanwhile in Dopamine City is the fifth novel by Man-Booker Prize-winning Australian-born author, DBC Pierre (Peter Findlay). Having successfully managed to thus far resist Shelby-Anne’s persistent pleading for a smart-phone, one impulsive act by Lonregan Cush makes the purchase an essential part of keeping his little girl close. And if his nine-year-old has a smart-phone, he’ll need to enter the digital age too, swimming through the cyberspace miasma himself, to keep her safe.

If the closest it has ever been to sublime was before his wife, Diane died nine years earlier, Lonnie’s life, over the course of the novel, steadily progresses to the ridiculous, then to the tragic, and ultimately to the sad and pathetic, until the final, hopeful, pages. Along the way, he is swamped by more useless information than he could ever want or need. He loses his job, some of his friends, custody, his freedom and sometimes, hope.

More than half of the novel is presented in a rather annoying format of the main narrative (in which, as a further irritant, there are no quote marks for speech) together with a continuous sidebar that takes up a third of the page. This side bar is a newsfeed that relates to the main narrative (a bit like those annoying ads that pop up in your browser pages) consisting of (often bizarre) research and studies, equally bizarre apps, weird litigation, support campaigns for wacky causes (such as the rights of the virtually pregnant).

If, initially, the reader has to get past the blue-collar-worker patois without a phrase book, the story does later demonstrate the phenomenon of language being unrecognisably altered at viral speed through trendsetters dictating use. With occasionally convoluted, but always rich descriptive prose, Pierre also explores the awful potential of trust scores. This is a funny, clever and insightful commentary on the world we now inhabit, and the Often scary) direction it is taking.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Faber & Faber

[Keen Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

“As conflict vastly increases our use of social media compared to agreement, and social media principally exists to increase our interaction with the markets.”

You know those authors and novels which sacrifice any semblance of a story in order to make a wider point about something else?...Well this was one of those. This starts off sluggish and murky and never really recovers and then we get to the second part and it actually starts to get worse as the action splits into two columns, one is what is left of the narrative, and the second column is a mindless stream, presumably from an online feed, which makes for a ghastly read.

From then on this gets really messy as it descends deeper into a sub-Foster Wallace distraction-fest and it becomes almost impossible to maintain interest in or understanding of what remains of the story as it appears to disintegrate with each turn of the page.

To be fair to Pierre he really nails the toxic drivel that floods the vast majority of the internet and shows how it can and does disproportionately shape and influences so many people, particularly vulnerable, insecure and younger ones, but his story is also utter drivel and that’s the real problem here.

“We’re talking about masturbation sold as purposeful life. Pay attention, I tell you now: the model that made you boys rich, of selling the market unfinished ideas built to decoy routines in the brain, is not honest or agile enough for what we have to do. Life is real now, not beta.”

Sure I get the point he is trying to make about the madness of hyper- litigious America, and the perils of the internet and the impact of social media and the dumbing down on developing minds, the constant distraction of mind numbing nonsense, and our increasing obsession with peer validation and pressure to maintain a hyper-cool online presence etc, but can you not do it in a more readable or enjoyable way?...As the likes of Nathan Hill with “The Nix” or Ali Smith has done with her Seasonal Quartet?...

Perhaps this is the real difference between a great author and a not so great one, the ability to make great wider points about the world or the human condition, but still managing to craft a good story at the same time?...OK to finish on a positive note, the cover was pretty decent and the pages smelled nice.

[Iryna Chernyshova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Сатирично, цінично, феєрично


(Як я волала від нещодавньої новини про щось там з аватаром у грі у дівчини з Британії - вона майже дослівно повторила те, що написано в правому стовпчику.

А правий стовпчик це така фігня типу новинної стрічки - зліва оповідь від якогось персонажа, - яка до біса ускладнює і уповільнює процесс читання і змушує повертатися до попередніх сторінок, за що, як я зрозуміла, людям окремо не дуже зайшла ця книга. Інтерактив, а що поробиш. На щастя, це починається не одразу)).

[Iryna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5⭐

Більше відгуків за посиланням https://youtube.com/@yellowbooknook?s...

UPDATE: якщо ви думаєте, що в книги погана редактура, то ні це не помилки. Це так спілкуються персонажі, вони неосвічені і поверхневі.

Воно таке гіперболізоване, що голова починає боліти під кінець. Правда в цій гіперболізації і суть. Цікаво, чи можна сказати, що цей роман в якомусь сенсі антиутопія? Думаю так.

Отож маємо суспільство, котре перевели в життя уявним, а не реальним. Твоя вартість - це те, як ти зможеш себе подати в віртуальному світі. Якщо ти потрапляєш під хвилю хейту, то твій соціальний рейтинг падає нижче 60 і все ти можна сказати ізгой. Доставку їжі не замовити, банк тебе відмовляється обслуговувати, дітей забирають з-під опіки, а когось доводять до самогубства, бо натовп, що на тебе суне жахає, намагаєшся збігти і випадково протикаєш собі артерію.

Власне, автор гидким, жахаючим, брутальним чином показує один з варіантів майбутнього, де людьми керують соцмережі і навіть більше, бо розвиток технологій невпинний.
Тільки це все можна побачити, якщо глядіти здалеку на текст, а не впритул на той шар, що викликає емоції. Як в музеї, щоб оцінити картину треба відійти і побачити все разом, але не деталі.

ДіБіСі П'єр звісно талановитий автор, але точно не для всіх.
Все ж Вернон Господь Літл, його авторства мені сподобався більше.

[Gretchen Bernet-Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fan of DBC Pierre, I was very keen to read Meanwhile In Dopamine City and hoped it would be trademark gritty, convoluted and unique. This novel does not disappoint. It is someone else's problem all right, Lonnie's, but the author makes you read it blow by blow no matter how much you squirm. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing graphic, just everyday life enlarged to the point of unforgiveness. The minutia slowed me down in every paragraph, it forced me to read and take notice and subsequently understand the literary aspect.

The veneer of society is painfully scraped away to reveal a messy layer underneath. You have seen it, you have known about it, you have looked away. The main character Lon is besieged from every angle, coping with his friends and family. His young daughter Shelby shrieks through the chapters over a social media incident. Out-of-work Lon's story could be depressing or enlightening depending on how you read it. I found Professor Roos in 'A Fibonacci Bacchanal' and stats in 'Slightly Frowning Face' to be riveting and 'East Palisades' a glowing finale.

Pages are split further in, the mindset is disconcerting, but if you stick with it they form a cohesive pattern; like making dinner, watching TV, checking text messages, talking to the kids all at once. The hypothesis being the main destroyers of a person's individuality are multi-national corporations and advertising which legally trigger pleasure, part of the brain's reward system hence (I think) the dopamine reference. Pierre deftly shows how we are influenced and manipulated throughout life, Lon can accept the cost, ignore the cost, or will it be too late.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know how sometimes you think your phone is listening to you because you suddenly start to see adverts in your social media feeds that you haven’t searched for but which you have spoken to your partner about?

Welcome to the world of Meanwhile In Dopamine City.

Lonregan (Lonnie, Lon) is a recently unemployed worker living in an unnamed company town in an unnamed country (which sometimes feels like USA and sometimes feels like Australia (coincidentally two places the author has lived). When an unpremeditated act of violence means there is a real threat that Lon will lose custody of his daughter to his dead wife’s mother (who hates him), he succumbs to the pressure to get a mobile phone.

When he switches the phone on, the structure of the book changes and we see the thing that has given this book its place on the Goldsmiths shortlist (which is the only reason I read it because I didn’t like Vernon God Little, the only other book by Pierre that I have read, so I would have skipped it without this shortlisting). What happens is that the pages split in two with the left hand side carrying on the narrative in the form of a series of short monologues and the right hand side comprising social media feeds that are relevant to the developing (perhaps unravelling is a better word) story.

I have read that the author has said this is a device that will work for some people but not for others. I count myself as one for whom it worked. You have to make some choices about how you will read the book given that there are two distinct things happening, but once you settle into it, the two streams play off one another well.

This dual strand approach occupies a large part of the book. At the start Lon does not have a phone and at a few points after he acquires on he turns it off. At these times, the narrative is far more conventional.

I said “unravelling” might be a better work for the story. The book seems to open up a LOT of different ideas and it leaves most of them hanging, which is partly where the unravelling sensation comes from. It also comes from the increasingly incoherent plot which gradually gets more and more nonsensical until the reader is left surrounded by thousands of fragments with nothing to pull them together. Yes, there’s a central theme that follows Lon and his family (only his daughter gets any real character development, although there’s a sudden twist about his son at the end which then goes nowhere), but there’s a long list of other things that are partially developed to varying degrees. I imagine this is deliberate on the part of the author in a further attempt to simulate the social media feeds that surround us (there must be thousands of partial stories I have started reading/following on social media but then dropped for one reason or another).

I have to admit there were several points where I thought something along the lines of “This was fun when David Foster-Wallace did it” because it does have that kind of feel about it but without the quality.

In the end, I did like the “split screen” approach (but can understand why other won’t) and some parts of the rest of the book were OK, too. Unusually, I did not highlight a single sentence of the book and I think this reflects the fact that the writing is not beautiful.

I think this book just about gets to a 3 star rating because I liked the thing that people either like or hate.

[MR Roger & Sonia CAPPER · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book. Kept on reading in the hope something would twist, or change to redeem it, but it didnt. Massive disappointment for someone who has loved all of Pierre's works ever since VGL. Felt no interest in any of the characters, the format was a big turn off for me, and the story made no sense

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really liked this book. Thought the story was clever and entertaining. However, I had a real problem with the format of this novel on my Kindle. There were four or five sections in the book that split “news articles” with the narrative, which is fine, but the Kindle interpreted these as tables and you couldn’t adjust the format, again not a major issue, however the tables were close to 4-point type and sometimes colored which created a situation where the type was nearly invisible in these areas. That’s what took me so long reading this book. I read about 85% of it in two days and then these table sections took weeks to get through 10 pages at a time. Amazon needs to fix the Kindle edition.

[Victoria Steheresku · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книжка витріпала мені всі нутрощі)
В гарному (як би це не звучало) сенсі цього вислову.

Не знаю, як її сприйматимуть люди іншого покоління, і ті, в кого немає дітей, але я народилась в еру дискових телефонів і живу з підлітком.
Книжка рве душу на шмаття)

АЛЕ!
прям так, великими літерами

переклад (а скоріше - редактура) просто жах.
відчувається, як зрада від улюбленого видавництва

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meanwhile in Dopamine City is a satirical, technological novel about a single father trying to protect his children from the online world. Lonnie Cush has been laid off from his sanitation job—well, is waiting to hear about retraining—in a city dominated by the Company, a big tech company. He's trying to stop his mother-in-law getting custody of his two children, Egan and Shelby-Ann, whilst also dealing with the fact that nine-year-old Shelby is desperate for a smartphone. When he eventually gives in, she's opened up to a world of trolls and a range of new digital products and ideas, and Lon has to dive deeper online too to try and keep up.

The novel has two elements, the Cush family's struggles and the wider context of the digital and non-digital world, and much of the novel has parallel news reports showing how ideas and events progress and get twisted in different ways. Reading both together opens up elements of the plot and provides clever commentary, but makes for a difficult reading experience at times, constantly cutting off in the midst of a sentence to read the rest of the page. This also means there's a number of parallel narratives which it can be hard to keep track of, but they add different layers to the satire and widen the story, set in a non-specific city with non-specific countries involved.

This is a book with an interesting concept that takes elements of modern technology and pushes them to extremes, whilst also looking at a failing father, and the conceit of having the news feed down the side is an interesting way of giving wider context in the narrative. However, this makes it difficult to read, and quite a few of the narrative points felt very familiar from other recent stories like Black Mirror, which made it less engaging for me.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, hilarious and terrifying speculative fiction that kept me hooked till the last page. It's one of those book you can love or hate and I loved it.
It's full of ideas, voices, descriptions and sometimes the abundance of ideas and voices made me dizzy but it was also a reflection of the current information overload.
Shelby and Lonny are great characters. Each of them represents an approach to the net culture, one will win and the other will lose.
The story is set in an unnamed city dominated by tech giant, it could be anywhere because there's no place on the Earth where tech giant cannot reach.
It was a fascinating, entertaining and thought provoking read, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

[Jacqueline Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sincere thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley for providing me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest reviewl.

This is not my usual genre, I’m more into crime books and psychological ones too however I wanted to take the opportunity to read something from outside my norm. And I am glad I did!! Thank you for  opening up my mind to something totally different.

[Anna BAGRIY · Rating 3 out of 5]

Починалася дуже круто, захопила мова, неймовірні метафори. Але потім це все зійшло на ні і читати стало нудно. Плюс додалося безліч нових дійових осіб відслідкувати лінії яких здавалося неможливим. Потім додалася колонка «новин», що ще більше розсіювало увагу. Таке враження, що одночасно читаєш декілька книжок не повʼязаних одна з одною. Обтяжливо

[Haska Shyyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant satire of modern world! Always was a big fan of DBC Pierre’s wit and this novel was like gulping it non-stop. The structure with the newsfeed column is just mind-blowing. Definitely an opus-magnum which accumulated the best features of all his previous works.

[хель · Rating 2 out of 5]

ні, передумала, не три зірочки, а дві :(

прочитання цієї книги я можу порівняти з тим, як дивитись супер замудрьоний дуже концептуальний артхаусний фільм якогось дуже спеціалізованого вузьконаправленого режисера, інколи перемотувати назад, щоб хоч 5 хвилин з усього фільму зрозуміти, але в результаті коли в тебе спитають, про що фільм, ти такий 🙄🙄🙄

[Bea Windsor · Rating 1 out of 5]

I GIVE UP

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

* I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *

Single parent Lonny lives in the worst end of the worst street in the worst part of the city. When he is retrenched from his dead-end job as a sewerage worker, he seems to have hit rock bottom. But then the social security people come and accuse him of assaulting one of his children, and threaten to give them to his mother-in-law if he does not submit to anger management, and to the endless surveillance reach of the state.

In this dystopian state, one's online influence is all that matters, and young people are the real economic power, because they are more adept with the technology. Stories, photos and memes shared online can make or ruin a reputation instantly, whether they are true or not. The only thing that matters is how it looks to online viewers, who are capable of instant turnarounds in their judgments as soon as a conflicting meme arises. Lonny is bewildered by this new online world, and all his efforts to get to grips with it only sink him deeper into the role of social outcast.

Pierre has captured something significant here about where social media is taking us, particularly the role of huge corporations in capturing more and more data about us in order to line their own pockets. In Dopamine City, an algorithm designed for measuring popularity online is swiftly adopted by banks, government and employers as a standard for who deserves trust and who doesn't, running out of control and way beyond its original intent. Much as Facebook is now much, much more than the platform for keeping up with friends that it started as.

One way that Pierre has captured this online life is to chop up the narrative with incessant posts from news feeds and influencers. The news feeds provide a rolling account of what is going on in the world around Lonny, the way that various influencers and social movements emerge and interact, and how that spills out into real life.

This reflects the way that our social media life interrupts our real life and drives our attention away from what is really important and that, ultimately, is what this book is all about. I would say, though, that this writing style can be quite disconcerting, and I could see people who like a clear narrative flow disliking it intensely.

[Daniel Lyttleton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love D B C Pierre's writing and this book had potential to be a great satire of the smartphone/social media age, but with the literary device he employs 2/3 of the way through (which is designed to mimic the distractions of a newsfeed, I assume) it ended up becoming too frustrating and losing my interest. Perhaps that's the point, but I can't say I enjoyed this as much as I hoped to.

[Lorina Fedorova · Rating 2 out of 5]

Хтось вже написав, що цей роман — як артхаусний фільм, і кращої метафори я вже й не придумаю. Дуже видно, як ДіБіСі загорівся ідеєю, придумав ефектні декорації, надав тексту характерного стилю. Але як і зашорені артхаусні режисери, автор загрався із самою задумкою і повністю зафакапив основні літературні стовпи, дотримання яких принаймні роблять текст читабельним. І ні, назвати це творіння постмодерном, щоб відхреститися від основоположних принципів літератури, недостатньо.

Отже, роман очевидно розкриває тему згубного впливу інформаційних технологій на людство. У центрі сюжету — чоловік Лон, який втратив дружину, втратив роботу, але все ще має двох дітей, з якими відчайдушно прагне відновити зв'язок. А вони цього, як видно, не сильно хочуть, тому що світ уже заполонили соціальні мережі, сенсації та нові технології, які їм, оцим антихристам, набагато цікавіші.

Головні герої проживають у Місті, майже точно списаного з типового американського з його джентрифікованими та маргіналізованими районами, сповненими мігрантами, бідністю, кредитами та іпотеками. Десь на фоні бурлить війна, Компанія-монополіст скорочує працівників, тому що їх обов'язки вже чудово виконує штучний інтелект, а в новинах шириться чергова новина, яку всі обговорюють. Класичні дистопічні декорації.

Роман розпочинається з того, як Лон у приступі гніву дає ляпаса своїй дочці. Далі сцени у барі, "розборки" у сусідів. Майже ідеально прописаний образ батька-тирана. І цей початок дійсно вражає своєю жорстокістю і готує до вражаючих читань.

Але далі П'єр каже, що ні-ні, насправді Лон хороший і він розкаюється у тому, що зробив. Ось тут і починаються проблеми.

Моя основна претензія до роману — абсолютно відсутній психологізм бодай для головних героїв. З одного боку Лон у нас маргінал: працював на низькооплачуваній роботі, скоротили, основне хобі, судячи з усього — зависнути в барі з пивом. З іншого боку, у раптові моменти він постає як люблячий і розуміючий батько, який готовий гори звернути заради посмішки своєї донечки. Не те щоб в реальності одне з іншим не дружило, але П'єр подає ці образи настільки обірвано та непослідовно, що врешті не віриш жодному.

Загадкою також залишається питання, чому Лон був єдиним чуваком на цій планеті, кому ідея телефонів здавалась непривабливою? Ми отримуємо пояснення, чому він його врешті купив, але не знаємо його опінію, чому він до останнього впирався. Непогано було б, знаєте, прописати це, щоб бодай трохи розуміти головного героя. Про його дітей та інших персонажів я взагалі мовчу. Вони залишились просто ходячими нікнеймами.

Коли Лон під'єднується до інтернету, текст буквально починає роздвоюватися, що стає його основною фішкою. Справа описуються події у фізичному світі, а зліва — вирізки з новин інтернету. Багатьом читачам було важко сприймати текст адекватно у такому форматі, і це цілком можна зрозуміти. Особливо якщо врахувати той факт, що абсурдні новини зліва цікавіші, а постійно перемикатися від одного до іншого в певний момент стає просто нестерпно.

Особисто я підійшла до цієї частини тексту з певною стратегією, що дещо полегшили муки. Спочатку я читала по 20-25 сторінок "новин", а далі перемикалась на основну лінію. Читати навпаки виявилось неефективно, тому що так чи сяк події з фізичного світу зачіпають віртуальні новини. І якщо сам процес читання це полегшило, то задоволення від того, що ж я власне читаю — на жаль ні.

По-перше, сюжетних ліній тут забагато. Як би я не хотіла залишатися включеною, але імена лівих персонажів вилітали з голови як тільки я прочитувала абзац. І це ніяк не повпливало на моє розуміння тексту. Вони всі так чи інакше зв'язані між собою, але сенсу в цьому немає ніякого, тому що це ні до чого не призвело. Тому можна було спокійно обійтися лише перспективою Лона і не гратися з багатолінійністю.

По-друге, дуже швидко втомлюєшся і від "цікавіших" новин. Вони всі побудовані за певним шаблоном: це або формат "британські вчені щось довели", або "ось цей чувак став раптом популярним тому *щось абсурдне*, або "прихильники цієї партії *зробили або заявили щось абсурдне*". Вся сатиричність цих новин втрачається, коли читаєш одне й те саме по колу.

По-третє, оригінальність самих ідей, які намагався вкласти П'єр. Мене постійно переслідувала думка, що десь я це вже чула. І дійсно, купу всього вже зняло "Чорне дзеркало". Соціальний рейтинг? 3 сезон 1 серія. Слідкування за дітьми? 4.2. "Воскресіння" своїх коханих померлих? 2.1.

Але в серіалі є хоча б логічні передумови, мотивації героїв та шокуючі наслідки з мораллю. А тут? Тут просто вульгарна мова (I got the point ,але читати це було все одно противно), розпорошеність тексту, нудотна сатира. І все це зводиться в абсолютно бездарний фінал.

Фінал тут ніби прописала добра феєчка, а допомогли їй у цьом фанати всесвіту Марвел. На фоні атомної війни, сім'я врешті возз'єднується, діти відреклись від телефону і повернулись до батька, а разом вони втікають від всепоглинаючого світу технологій у світ підземних труб. Що тут сказати. Це майже однозначно написали під час бедтріпу. Навіть бажання проводити аналіз і пояснювати чому це нелогічно та тупо, немає жодного.


З плюсів, дуже гарна рожева обкладинка у нашому виданні. Буде стояти на поличках і радувати моє око. Головне не згадувати, що ж там справді наповнює цю книгу.

[Bárbara Vitorino · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book because I liked the cover and there is a cat in the cover. It was okay. Not cat-related.

[Sue]

Meanwhile in Dopamine City is a digital dystopia fever dream that, though satirical, also feels like it could all happen next Thursday.

The internet here is not called the web but the grid. That's much more fitting for a corporatised digital space that wants to snap you to position like a spreadsheet entry and let you calcify in place.

In a fictional city a private company, Octagon, is mechanising the shit out of city processes. Now, it creates a Facebook-like platform called Rike, which quickly extends its tentacles even deeper into civic matters and people begin to be scored, and those scores begin to affect them out in the world, what they can do, what they can order.

Octagon headquarters are like Google: in analogue "an ecologically sustainable architectural marvel and equal opportunities 'achievement space'" with sushi and indoor slides while digitally its tentacles are sucking up everyone's humanity for profit.

Lonnie Cush is one of the many human workers Octagon is replacing with mechanisation. Initial mechanisation had "made the workforce look pointless on paper" but actually created accidents. This was solved not by adding more humans but by removing them and mechanising further. Lon refuses to retrain to work and so he is sacked.

Lonnie is a good-enough but fallible everyman, with a big heart, a bit of idealism but not nearly enough of the performative wokeness beloved by corporations and liberals, trying to keep his head above water and his two kids together and away from his mother-in-law, who's been trying to take his daughter, Shelby, off him ever since Lonnie's wife died.

The first and last parts of the story are told in the third person, centreing mostly around Lonnie.
The book then splits off into two sections. On the left is a running stream of news articles from the grid, many of which report on scientific studies from undisclosed sources that conveniently create space in the market for the new bit of tech about to be released. Some articles are about people who go on to become celebrities through random viral events, people who are often not what they seem and often pretty shitty people, but whose celebrity catapults them to spaces of high earning power and Rike points while plebs like Lon get pushed in the other direction.

The right-hand sections of this central section are first-person accounts and online conversations by Lonnie, his kids, his work colleagues, aquaintances and family, and they roll on at a feverish pace as Octagon's influence presses in and forces them into its system and its tech that draws them in even deeper.

It's all ramped up for satirical effect and yet it all feels so drearily familiar. The memes and the lingo and the people are different but it all feels like it's either happening now or could be happening soon. For Lonnie, when the fever dream finally spikes, the chance comes to break away.

I'm left with a certain wistfulness after this book. I guess it's seeing our digital world in narrative form where average fucked-up people like you and me are okay in our natural imperfect state but we have been taken over by a digital bureaucracy that profits on slicing and dicing us up into categories. To see as problematic the system instead of the broekens its profiteering from is an uncommon enough occurrence for this book to feel a little edifying in the end.

DBC Pierre has a bit of a cult following. This is my first read of his and I can see why. It was a grand undertaking to explore so many areas of our culture. If you enjoy seeing the big picture instead of disconnected meaningless blips then give this book a whirl.

#MeanwhileinDopamineCity #DBCPierre #technocracy #corporatocracy

[Meredith Jaffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

In an article in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/202... describing how he wrote his Man Booker winning Vernon God Little, ex-pat Australian writer DBC Pierre said that he wanted the book to ‘taste like a lime.’ Specifically, “I found a lime at a stall in Balham, which was the rarest lime I’d ever tasted, full of zing without being sour, and I decided that this was how the book should taste.”
In the middle of reading Meanwhile in Dopamine City, and having loved his 2010 novel Lights Out in Wonderland (with its unforgettable setting of a Berlin nightclub housed in the bowels Nazi-built Tempelhof airport) a taste of lime is exactly the right evocation of Pierre’s work. Other descriptions that spring to mind include muscular, erratic, irreverent, clever, dynamic, gritty, hilarious. Or, to put it another way, Pierre’s writing is all over the shop but in a good way (if you like that kind of thing.) As a reader he makes you work for your rewards but the rewards are there in between the great big belly laughs and cringeworthy moments. In short, it does the job all good satire should.
Meanwhile in Dopamine City is set in a company town. Our hapless hero is Lon Lonergan, single father of two, and now out of work sanitation engineer. He discovers his nine-year-old daughter Shelby-Ann doing something his over-active imagination considers age inappropriate. The ultimate upshot of which is that in order to keep an eye on her, he buys her a smartphone. And, as this is set slightly in the future, think of the horrors of technology now and extrapolate to the power of hundred. Soon, Lon is caught up trying to navigate the dire digital world and, in the process, makes a complete mess of his relationship with his children and friends, and his love life.
Pierre structures the novel to duplicate the fragmented and distracted vibe of the digital milieu. Once Lon gets a phone, the page splits in two. The left side is the novel’s narrative. The right side documents the social media frenzy that parallels the real world but also acts as a commentary on Lon’s life. It is incredibly clever and really annoying but a powerful literary device to reflect and criticise social media in equal measure. Novels such as these are not to everyone’s taste but if you feel like your reading is getting a bit plain vanilla, then maybe what’s required is a hint of lime.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the face of it, 'Meanwhile in Dopamine City' is a tale about a single father trying to protect his children from the online world. In a fictional city dominated by the Company, Lonnie Cush has been laid off from his sanitation job. Whilst trying to prevent his mother-in-law getting custody of his two children, Egan and Shelby-Ann, he gives in to his daughter's desire for a smart phone. At once, she's opened up to a world of trolls and a range of new digital products and ideas, which Lon has limited knowledge and no control over.

They live in an area of the city which, though unpalatable, has up-till-now kept them somewhat removed from the technological whirlwind around them;

"ant-ridden Palisades tableland where birds were nervous and bunnies were grim, where a barrow could languish for a hundred years, where even if there were homes they would be bare, even if there were owners they wouldn't be there."

I vividly remember reading 'Vernon God Little' and being astonished by DBC Pierre's artful manipulation of language to glean meaning and spotlight moments in a totally eye-opening and sometimes unsettling way. And here again, in his latest novel, Pierre moulds and fashions his narrative to ensure that no reader will scan lazily over large sections or misinterpret his implication. Instead, I regularly found myself rereading passages to benefit from his artistry:

"The shiny young man with straked golden hair like the undercoat of a hedgehog wove between ash trees as clean as pool cues to stand on the shore of the flat."

Ultimately however, I found the interwoven first-hand accounts and online conversations by Lonnie, his children, family, work colleagues, and acquaintances, unsettling and exhausting. Gradually, the thread of the narrative unwound for me until the story itself fell away and was replaced by a stark warning about a future that we are to willingly barrelling towards.

My thanks to netgalley, the publisher and author for sharing an advance copy with me in return for my honest opinion.

[Xander Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a weird book this turned out to be. Could've possibly given it 5 stars if the beginning wasn't so ridiculous and confusing. But boy did it pay off after ploughing through it.

This is a visceral satire. So visceral, and so toxic, it's practically caustic to the reader into considering it a serious, and brutal critique on modern online culture and social media as a whole. Which, in a way, it is, but, the humor, the self-awareness, and the format of the book should prove otherwise.

By taking real-world concerns and blowing them to incredibly insane proportions, DBC Pierre creates a dystopia that's so toxic, so insipid, and so self-conscious, that people lose their personalities, their families, and their realities, as things become more and more dependent on social interaction, or lack thereof, and everyone becomes indebted to the opinions of others and the way the world views them.

If you're not a fan of the book, it's probably because the style is so different. Lots of internal monologues, lack of punctuation to see who's talking, and the gimmicky news feed on the sides, could definitely become a drag. But I think it adds to the ridiculousness of the story and its morals, which is constantly shifting the goal posts in order to satirize the wishy-washy opinions of a public mindset, which can turn on someone on a dime.

Not for everyone, but very interesting in its satire, and I would put bets that some of its crazy ideas may actually end up coming to play in the future.

[Andrew Dun · Rating 5 out of 5]

DBC Pierre's abrasive prose takes a bit of getting used to, but once you get familiar with his style you are rewarded with an engrossing and innovative novel.

About a quarter of the way into the book the narrative splits into two columns, with social media style entries from the characters on one half of the page carrying the story forward and news updates on the other page filling out the background of the fictional society the story is set in. This style does an effective job of simulating the social media experience, with the often inane news updates competing with personal stories for your attention. You quickly realise that the news stories are often influenced by the personal text on the same page, just like social media algorithms deliver news based on other content you consume.

The distopic setting is a satirical critique of the impact that social media and algorithmic digital interaction has on society. I was particularly amused by a social media starlet's charity drive to provide loot boxes for under-privileged vloggers.

The ending felt a little rushed to me, with a few plot strands that could have been tidied up better, but I enjoyed this novel on the whole and think it will be the sort of book that you reflect back on years after reading it.