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Quotients
Two people search for connection in a world of fractured identities and aliases, global finance, big data, intelligence bureaucracies, algorithmic logic, and terror.
Jeremy Jordan and Alexandra Chen hope to make a quiet home together but struggle to find a space safe from their personal secrets. For Jeremy, this means leaving behind his former life as an intelligence operative during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. For Alexandra, a job in image management for whole countries cannot prepare her for her missing brother’s sudden reappearance.
In a culture of limitless surveillance, Jeremy and Alexandra will go to great lengths to protect what is closest to them and answer the question of whether their love will be returned. Spanning decades and continents, their saga brings them into contact with a down-and-out online journalist, shadowy security professionals, and jockeying technology experts, each of whom has a different understanding of whether information really protects us, and how we might build a world worth trusting in our paranoid age.
Jeremy Jordan and Alexandra Chen hope to make a quiet home together but struggle to find a space safe from their personal secrets. For Jeremy, this means leaving behind his former life as an intelligence operative during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. For Alexandra, a job in image management for whole countries cannot prepare her for her missing brother’s sudden reappearance.
In a culture of limitless surveillance, Jeremy and Alexandra will go to great lengths to protect what is closest to them and answer the question of whether their love will be returned. Spanning decades and continents, their saga brings them into contact with a down-and-out online journalist, shadowy security professionals, and jockeying technology experts, each of whom has a different understanding of whether information really protects us, and how we might build a world worth trusting in our paranoid age.
393 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 12, 2020
29 people are currently reading
1105 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
August 21, 2020
It took me a long time to finish this book, not because I didn't like it but because it was so dense, challenging, and (to be honest) both thought- and anxiety-provoking. Having finished it, I think it's a masterpiece. This is a fragmented, paranoid novel about paranoia and conspiracy that explores important questions like "when you know your government is spying on you, how paranoid is too much?" Or "how do we trust each other? Is it even possible to trust? Is everyone hiding something? How do we love in late-stage panopticon capitalism?" Everyone in this novel is grappling with truth, lies, trust, betrayal, and trying to forge a future despite the sins and secrets of their pasts. A remarkable work of fiction.
January 3, 2021
I tried, I really did. I got through 108 pages, nearly a third of the book, and I just couldn't keep going.
Things I liked: the author's prose. The use of language was outstanding.
But, there were far too many things I didn't like.
People behave in given ways for a reason, and the author never let the reader in on what those reasons might be. So, nearly a third of the way in, we don't know why Alexandra can't tell Jeremy that her missing brother has returned, or why Sheldon was missing in the first place. We don't know why Jeremy can't tell Alexandra that he's given her a false name, even as they are building a life together. And we don't know why the IRA, which Jeremy infiltrated in the 1990s, is trying to recruit him again.
And honestly? I didn't care enough about these characters to keep reading. They felt like two-dimensional liars rather than real people ... and because the plot seemed to be driven solely by liars and the lies they told, I couldn't even enjoy that. For all I know, things started to come together on page 109, but it didn't matter.
This book just wasn't for me.
Things I liked: the author's prose. The use of language was outstanding.
But, there were far too many things I didn't like.
People behave in given ways for a reason, and the author never let the reader in on what those reasons might be. So, nearly a third of the way in, we don't know why Alexandra can't tell Jeremy that her missing brother has returned, or why Sheldon was missing in the first place. We don't know why Jeremy can't tell Alexandra that he's given her a false name, even as they are building a life together. And we don't know why the IRA, which Jeremy infiltrated in the 1990s, is trying to recruit him again.
And honestly? I didn't care enough about these characters to keep reading. They felt like two-dimensional liars rather than real people ... and because the plot seemed to be driven solely by liars and the lies they told, I couldn't even enjoy that. For all I know, things started to come together on page 109, but it didn't matter.
This book just wasn't for me.
November 18, 2020
It's important at the outset to specify that O'Neill writes in a distilled, condensed prose-poetry style that at times is almost telegraphic. That's ideal for the reader (like me) who loves a puzzle-box, but might be maddening to those who prefer a novel of paranoid suspense to be told in a linear fashion. But even those who ponder cryptic sentences over and over to tease meaning from them, can still appreciate the tangle of counter-spies and counter-betrayal lingering in this puzzling novel about intelligence, social media, market representation, and yes, the Spectacle itself.
The novel roughly follows the trajectory and marriage of Jeremy and Alexandra, two ideal lovers who have kept many secrets from each other because it isn't always clear what to disclose. The book touches lightly on the London subway bombings, on the conversion of Provo IRA to New IRA in Ireland, of the all-encompassing narcissistic social media network here known as Cathect, of the hidden layers of NSA that Edward Snowden never quite took us to, and the people in the shadows who keep things moving. O'Neill points and suggests without fully fleshing out the corners of what she wants to convey, which is the ideal way to examine paranoia without falling into the trap of the paranoid.
The book is brief and understated because speaking more explicitly might condemn the reader to falling into the rabbit hole. This leaves O'Neill with two challenges, however. No matter how one wishes to be fresh in discussing the ways that "influencer" people on social media are their own best omniscient spies, and are far more effective at disclosing themselves than any "big data" mining operation of NSA or NRO, she can't help but be a little bit stereotyped because so many aspects of social media have been discussed to death. The second problem relates to dialog. In order not to have conversations seem to be too overblown or trite, O'Neill has her characters speak in shorthand, which fits with the puzzle-book nature of this novel, but might cause the average reader to stop and say, "Do real people, even tedious intellectuals, ever really talk like that?" In that sense, the dialog within doesn't always pass the sniff test.
Still, given those caveats, this is a captivating and frightening novel. As we follow the multiple stories and identities of Alexandra's brother, as well as the efforts of the failed journalist who tries to bring her brother into the light, we realize there is a lot of truth in the old saw of "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really out to get you." In our modern (particularly post-2020) pathology, the entire society is paranoid. But it isn't because we're imagining things. It's because we're all out to get each other, and just as with the interactions with the mysterious "Wright" of many names, some of us are armed and dangerous at all times.
The novel roughly follows the trajectory and marriage of Jeremy and Alexandra, two ideal lovers who have kept many secrets from each other because it isn't always clear what to disclose. The book touches lightly on the London subway bombings, on the conversion of Provo IRA to New IRA in Ireland, of the all-encompassing narcissistic social media network here known as Cathect, of the hidden layers of NSA that Edward Snowden never quite took us to, and the people in the shadows who keep things moving. O'Neill points and suggests without fully fleshing out the corners of what she wants to convey, which is the ideal way to examine paranoia without falling into the trap of the paranoid.
The book is brief and understated because speaking more explicitly might condemn the reader to falling into the rabbit hole. This leaves O'Neill with two challenges, however. No matter how one wishes to be fresh in discussing the ways that "influencer" people on social media are their own best omniscient spies, and are far more effective at disclosing themselves than any "big data" mining operation of NSA or NRO, she can't help but be a little bit stereotyped because so many aspects of social media have been discussed to death. The second problem relates to dialog. In order not to have conversations seem to be too overblown or trite, O'Neill has her characters speak in shorthand, which fits with the puzzle-book nature of this novel, but might cause the average reader to stop and say, "Do real people, even tedious intellectuals, ever really talk like that?" In that sense, the dialog within doesn't always pass the sniff test.
Still, given those caveats, this is a captivating and frightening novel. As we follow the multiple stories and identities of Alexandra's brother, as well as the efforts of the failed journalist who tries to bring her brother into the light, we realize there is a lot of truth in the old saw of "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really out to get you." In our modern (particularly post-2020) pathology, the entire society is paranoid. But it isn't because we're imagining things. It's because we're all out to get each other, and just as with the interactions with the mysterious "Wright" of many names, some of us are armed and dangerous at all times.
May 31, 2020
3.5 Stars. Quotients is a cup brimming over in ambition. The scope, scale and depth of subject matter, along with O’Neill’s approach to exploring them, is wantonly challenging.
In literary prose filled with doublespeak, whether spycraft or verbal jousting, seemingly disparate character perspectives are laid before the reader. It is unsettling. The path to joining the dots is obscured, but nonetheless, our instinct to do so is strong. But can our desire to find connections, or even problems for solutions, conjure images within spilled paint? This is one of the many questions Quotients asks of its audience. Continue reading: https://www.bookloverbookreviews.com/...
In literary prose filled with doublespeak, whether spycraft or verbal jousting, seemingly disparate character perspectives are laid before the reader. It is unsettling. The path to joining the dots is obscured, but nonetheless, our instinct to do so is strong. But can our desire to find connections, or even problems for solutions, conjure images within spilled paint? This is one of the many questions Quotients asks of its audience. Continue reading: https://www.bookloverbookreviews.com/...
February 11, 2020
Big Data and spies
Tracy O’Neill is an author and holds a PhD in communication from Columbia University. She teaches and was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Epiphany. Her short stories appeared in The New Yorker , The Guardian and Rolling Stone, among others. She received several prizes for her fiction and her debut novel The Hopeful was received with great praise in 2015. In 2020 a new novel from her hand will be published by Soho Press: Quotients.
Jeremy Jordan and Alexandra Chen have found each other. They try to build a life together, but their secrets are nowhere safe in our distrustful society. Jeremy has a secret past as a spy and Alexandra tries to contact her paranoid brother. Quotients is a novel about a world in which data and information are not always used for the right purposes, in which people use different identities and pseudonyms, in which algorithms determine our issues of the day and in which terrorism celebrates its heyday.
Quotients is not an easy novel, the story is a bit like a spy novel, but it is more than that. O’Neill exposes the dangers of our time, our trust in algorithms and the government. At the same time, Jeremy and Alexandra, in addition to their secrets and intricate intrigues, are no different than the average reader; a couple trying to create their own home. Their own family that must be protected at all costs.
But protected against what exactly? There are many characters in the novel, and it is not always clear who is who or how the characters relate to each other. Nobody seems to be trustworthy and the whole society is becoming increasingly suspicious at all possible levels. There also are many powers working at levels that are invisible and inaccessible to ordinary citizens, and some people are making themselves and others completely crazy about this.
The writing style of O’Neill does not make it any easier, although the way of writing fits in with the story she tells. Quotients is patchy, not only in the short chapters that follow each other quickly and change character and focalization time and time again, but also in the many characters that the author presents without any introduction. The reader lacks context up to the very last page. Phrases often consist of single words and scenes remain separate from each other without forming a coherent story.
Quotients is a novel about the power and impotence of the media and the citizen, about conspiracy theories and a distrust of the government and the army. O'Neill leaves her readers confused and insecure, something that fits her story and the society of which this novel is a symptom and result at the same time.
- Many thanks to the publisher for making an ARC available for this review through Edelweiss
Tracy O’Neill is an author and holds a PhD in communication from Columbia University. She teaches and was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Epiphany. Her short stories appeared in The New Yorker , The Guardian and Rolling Stone, among others. She received several prizes for her fiction and her debut novel The Hopeful was received with great praise in 2015. In 2020 a new novel from her hand will be published by Soho Press: Quotients.
Jeremy Jordan and Alexandra Chen have found each other. They try to build a life together, but their secrets are nowhere safe in our distrustful society. Jeremy has a secret past as a spy and Alexandra tries to contact her paranoid brother. Quotients is a novel about a world in which data and information are not always used for the right purposes, in which people use different identities and pseudonyms, in which algorithms determine our issues of the day and in which terrorism celebrates its heyday.
Quotients is not an easy novel, the story is a bit like a spy novel, but it is more than that. O’Neill exposes the dangers of our time, our trust in algorithms and the government. At the same time, Jeremy and Alexandra, in addition to their secrets and intricate intrigues, are no different than the average reader; a couple trying to create their own home. Their own family that must be protected at all costs.
“Alexandra wanted to be wry and knowing, like the women in New York who somehow had it all, calm and casual in their thin cashmere sweaters, buttering bread for their children at brunch on the weekend and stepping crisply to hail a cab from work at five, and all of it, their happiness, ignored like a given.”
But protected against what exactly? There are many characters in the novel, and it is not always clear who is who or how the characters relate to each other. Nobody seems to be trustworthy and the whole society is becoming increasingly suspicious at all possible levels. There also are many powers working at levels that are invisible and inaccessible to ordinary citizens, and some people are making themselves and others completely crazy about this.
“Because he says he sees now it won’t stop. They are beginning to send cops to houses based on predictive policing and to develop diagnostic codes. They will round up people for crimes, for mental illness, and he doubts anyone will fight it because they don’t know how to argue with the science of safety.”
The writing style of O’Neill does not make it any easier, although the way of writing fits in with the story she tells. Quotients is patchy, not only in the short chapters that follow each other quickly and change character and focalization time and time again, but also in the many characters that the author presents without any introduction. The reader lacks context up to the very last page. Phrases often consist of single words and scenes remain separate from each other without forming a coherent story.
“It was a year of many stories. It was a year it was difficult to remember them all, even when they were buzzing in your pocket. There were acronyms for news missed. There were acronyms for the fear of what would be missed. And there were many dead.”
Quotients is a novel about the power and impotence of the media and the citizen, about conspiracy theories and a distrust of the government and the army. O'Neill leaves her readers confused and insecure, something that fits her story and the society of which this novel is a symptom and result at the same time.
- Many thanks to the publisher for making an ARC available for this review through Edelweiss
September 7, 2020
This book is so densely written and I cared so little for any of the characters that I put it down as unreadable 45 pages in. I gave it a good shot, I really did, but in those 45 pages the author failed to explain to me where the rising action was going and why it should matter to me. When you have to repeatedly refer to the book jacket notes to figure out what the story is about, it's a bad sign. O'Neill's writing approach seems to be "more is better," and no evidence of editing is anywhere near. Words, so many words. Sentences that either run on and on or dissolve into fragments. Imagery described by the most complicated terms possible. An aura of pretension ("I'm writing an Important Novel!") that the over-styled author image and biography on the back jacket does nothing to dispel. (What does "attended" MFA and PhD programs mean? Is O'Neill a grad school dropout times two?) By the fifth time I found myself wondering, "Who is this person?" "What did she just say?" or "Which one just did that?" I was done.
July 12, 2020
In the wake of 9/11, distrust became a comfortable backdrop to the upbrings of we, the millennials and successive generations. Big Brother and Big Data, ubiquitous surveillance, foreign intelligence and invasion — the breadth of exposure fears is an ever-expanding chasm in the Information Age. In Quotients, O’Neill takes this modern-primal panic of being seen and flips it inward — how far will we go to protect being known fully?
At the center of this narrative is Jeremy, a former intelligence operative, and Alexandra, an image fixer for nations. Their marriage is the chess board O’Neill plays out the relatable relationship fears — Is she cheating on me? — layering it with murkier and weightier questions of assurance — Do my secrets make me unlovable? We see Jeremy and Alexandra flailing in the mental deep ends of their individual pools, an infuriating contrast to the shallow end they often choose to splash around with one another.
The blunt dialogue between the couple is entirely Gilmore Girl -esque, in that, its reflexive wit is quick and smart, almost too quick and smart to be believable exchanges, but instruments each use to forge and ward off intimacy. Ripples of distrust permeate their parenting and surrounding rings, Jeremy’s ex-partner, Alexandra’s schizophrenic brother and the journalist desperately and feverishly attempting to make sense of it all.
“Pregnant women yelling at their already born.”
No page is without guttural examples of O’Neill’s rhetoric. She insists on extrapolating the casual, carefully taking it apart to repackage simple observations into beautifully-complicated narratives. Taken as a one-liner, the effect is stunning. Spanning the course of an entire book? Exhausting. Because by Quotient ’s end, the story is less resolved as it is wrapped up in an exquisite linguistic bow.
That O’Neill wasn’t out to write just another literary thriller is stunningly clear. However, Quotients is everything but.
In order to keep pace with its plot and characters (plus their code names and those code names’ aliases), a reader must assume the lunacy illustrated. O’Neill created a meaty meditation for the current age, art made of our paranoia.
At the center of this narrative is Jeremy, a former intelligence operative, and Alexandra, an image fixer for nations. Their marriage is the chess board O’Neill plays out the relatable relationship fears — Is she cheating on me? — layering it with murkier and weightier questions of assurance — Do my secrets make me unlovable? We see Jeremy and Alexandra flailing in the mental deep ends of their individual pools, an infuriating contrast to the shallow end they often choose to splash around with one another.
The blunt dialogue between the couple is entirely Gilmore Girl -esque, in that, its reflexive wit is quick and smart, almost too quick and smart to be believable exchanges, but instruments each use to forge and ward off intimacy. Ripples of distrust permeate their parenting and surrounding rings, Jeremy’s ex-partner, Alexandra’s schizophrenic brother and the journalist desperately and feverishly attempting to make sense of it all.
“Pregnant women yelling at their already born.”
No page is without guttural examples of O’Neill’s rhetoric. She insists on extrapolating the casual, carefully taking it apart to repackage simple observations into beautifully-complicated narratives. Taken as a one-liner, the effect is stunning. Spanning the course of an entire book? Exhausting. Because by Quotient ’s end, the story is less resolved as it is wrapped up in an exquisite linguistic bow.
That O’Neill wasn’t out to write just another literary thriller is stunningly clear. However, Quotients is everything but.
In order to keep pace with its plot and characters (plus their code names and those code names’ aliases), a reader must assume the lunacy illustrated. O’Neill created a meaty meditation for the current age, art made of our paranoia.
March 31, 2020
I thought this would be the perfect book to tackle during self - isolation. The prose is challenging, the story is multi-layered and it would take a greater investment to follow the threads of the characters.
Stylistically, the language is halting and mysterious and difficult to decode. The main characters have very straight forward wants, but their obstacles are anything but. I wanted to love this novel but the journey wasn't very pleasant of satisfying.
But I will try it again once its officially in print.
Obtained an Advance Uncopyedited Edition at a conference.
Stylistically, the language is halting and mysterious and difficult to decode. The main characters have very straight forward wants, but their obstacles are anything but. I wanted to love this novel but the journey wasn't very pleasant of satisfying.
But I will try it again once its officially in print.
Obtained an Advance Uncopyedited Edition at a conference.
August 29, 2020
Tracy O’Neill’s syntax is precise and arresting. Her liberal use of dialogue is the motor for a complex spy-thriller-slightly-noir plot. Reading this novel, I felt like I was watching a new style of movie: a smart one.
March 12, 2021
I'm still not sure I fully understood all the action in the novel, but the writing was amazing and I was completely captivated by the relationship between the main characters Jeremy and Alexandra. In many ways this was about concepts like secrets and safety and trust and public knowledge and personal pasts. Jeremy had been a British spy in Northern Ireland before he met Alexandra so there is a lot of history that was a little fuzzy for me. Alexandra has a brother who is either stark raving mad or is an informant for the US government. He is a coder and has all sorts of conspiracy theories about the role of technology in our daily lives. These are the secrets Jeremy and Alexandra don't know about each other, and each is convinced they can have a fresh start with their love and relationship, but they both get pulled back into the past in ways that make them suspicious of each other. Happiness is just out of reach. The two are in an interesting web of connections of other people who know parts of their lives - Alexandra has a college journalist friend, and her brother becomes an anonymous source for a book he is writing. Jeremy has an former spy 'friend' who also knows the brother - but Jeremy doesn't know this. The writing is so oblique it is almost poetry in places, but it also helps to obscure the action (and confused me at times) to make the final outcome both unexpected and somewhat haunting. Literary fiction for sure - though my library had labeled it a 'mystery,' which isn't quite right other than the mystery of trying to grasp exactly what happened. It runs through the fingers like sand.
October 24, 2022
Spy novel about information and sort of circular questions about trust and privacy. The use of language to create what can only be described as a very paranoid novel is, indeed superb. The writing is frenetic, and when I first read it, I breezed through 30 pages.
But there end the merits of the novel. The characters themselves, Alexandra Chen and Jordan Alston, are not particularly likable or even charismatic, resembling the saddest, most internal voices of a Chang Rae Lee novel, but somehow, despite being characters in a "spy novel", feel even more removed from any plot.
The central mysteries are around Alexandra's brother, who is essentially a paranoid NSA whistleblowers. He talks mostly in riddles, but he is only slightly more mysterious than the prose that threads the themes of the book. Information is weaponized. Information is not really truth. Lies are everywhere. It feels a little like a paranoid Reddit thread, which is made worse by the lack of a devotion to a plot.
Blurbs say that the book asks vital questions about our age. I'm not sure what those questions. Questions like "Can we have true love and trust in the age" feel a little silly, because of course people have healthy relationships every day, and their deep lies, at most, are about affairs and secret grudges against in-laws.
There are real, serious questions about surveillance, especially government surveillance. But the choice of who is used as characters, still characters from a bad Delillo novel so dead their deaths hardly register, severely undermines what might have been a compelling novel.
But there end the merits of the novel. The characters themselves, Alexandra Chen and Jordan Alston, are not particularly likable or even charismatic, resembling the saddest, most internal voices of a Chang Rae Lee novel, but somehow, despite being characters in a "spy novel", feel even more removed from any plot.
The central mysteries are around Alexandra's brother, who is essentially a paranoid NSA whistleblowers. He talks mostly in riddles, but he is only slightly more mysterious than the prose that threads the themes of the book. Information is weaponized. Information is not really truth. Lies are everywhere. It feels a little like a paranoid Reddit thread, which is made worse by the lack of a devotion to a plot.
Blurbs say that the book asks vital questions about our age. I'm not sure what those questions. Questions like "Can we have true love and trust in the age" feel a little silly, because of course people have healthy relationships every day, and their deep lies, at most, are about affairs and secret grudges against in-laws.
There are real, serious questions about surveillance, especially government surveillance. But the choice of who is used as characters, still characters from a bad Delillo novel so dead their deaths hardly register, severely undermines what might have been a compelling novel.
September 11, 2021
Not for the faint of heart of the light reader… it’s densely written and almost requires note taking so that if you leave it for more than 12 hours you can pick back up where you left off.
Layers upon layers that whilst do provide an almost anxiety inducing tension at points, it seems over written in the way some actors over act a scene in my opinion.
I see a lot of people didn’t stick with it, I too almost sacked it off a couple of times - but blaming that on work life balance rather than the writing. Maybe one I’d wished I’d read whilst on holiday in a cabin this winter but worth the read all the same.
If you’re a fast paced spy type of fan - this is not the book for you. But if you’re a slow burn to find out there may have been no fire all along but somehow everything around you is cinders fan… then worth a read!
Layers upon layers that whilst do provide an almost anxiety inducing tension at points, it seems over written in the way some actors over act a scene in my opinion.
I see a lot of people didn’t stick with it, I too almost sacked it off a couple of times - but blaming that on work life balance rather than the writing. Maybe one I’d wished I’d read whilst on holiday in a cabin this winter but worth the read all the same.
If you’re a fast paced spy type of fan - this is not the book for you. But if you’re a slow burn to find out there may have been no fire all along but somehow everything around you is cinders fan… then worth a read!
May 26, 2023
Yes the first 100 pages of this book are somewhat inscrutable, a lot of techno-babble on deep-state conspiracies. But I'm glad I stuck with it as I found some thought provoking passages and the characters started to fall into place. Could maybe be a rehabilitation project from a recovering social media addict. One wonderful attribute of this book is that the chapters are mercifully short and each one holds a promise that it may make more sense than those coming before. I would almost give it 4.5 stars as I think it will stay with me and no doubt it would improve, like so many books, with a second read.
"Advertisers have no compunction about mining the prose of our lives to satisfy our worst impulses. Because we ask for convenience and they give us a smaller world called customization."
"Advertisers have no compunction about mining the prose of our lives to satisfy our worst impulses. Because we ask for convenience and they give us a smaller world called customization."
April 8, 2020
I went back and forth on how much I liked Quotients pretty much throughout the book. Tracy O'Neill's elliptical writing style suits a narrative rife with paranoia and distrust of appearances, but it also makes the characters and the events that happen to them feel abstract and vague, detached from a concrete reality. At the same time, I think she effectively captures how the digital world feels at once inescapable and tenuous and how technology can be used by everyone from individual acquaintances and strangers to corporations and governments to exploit people's fears, insecurities, and desires - for safety, power, connection, love.
June 28, 2021
Oh boy, I don't know what to say about this book. I think it's telling that I read it weeks ago and am just now remembering to write a review. Not because it's wasn't good or interesting, but because it really did sort of skirt through my mind in an odd way. It's an interesting look at some complicated families and modern anxieties, but it feels like it's trying very very hard to make sure we know that. The writing itself is quite good, but in the end I didn't feel like I took much from it. Not a bad book, but one I can't imagine recommending to anyone.
April 21, 2021
A complex plot and interesting characters, along with an array of historical references and hackers: this is the kind of spy/espionage/thriller I'd love to see more of. Not necessarily an easy read. The point of view shifts are sometimes difficult at first (intentionally since identity and truth/lie/evasiveness carry the plot and character development) but really satisfying once you get into the novel. It gets better as it goes and has a wonderful, earned ending.
July 18, 2020
I wish more authors could invoke sociocultural landscapes as well as Tracy O'Neill. In this novel, which reminds me of The Names by Don DeLillo, O'Neill brings forth issues of surveillance, technology and emotional distance in diaspora against an international espionage setting. Thought-provoking and polished, down to the line.
December 8, 2021
I finished it, but through sheer will power. The writing is esoteric and feels intentionally exclusionary. I don’t like a book that cannot stand on its own in time and space and this one requires too much external context. I hate feeling like I’ve wasted my time on a book with so much left to read. I would not recommend wasting your’s.
April 10, 2020
I enjoyed reading, but it’s weird how much gets set up that never ends up going anywhere. That seemed kind of the point, but whatever that was went over my head. Baffling as that was, the characters and story were fun to follow, even if they seemed to announce things that never happen.
September 28, 2021
The writing was lovely, the characters were interesting, but the book was a little more confusing than it needed to be. There was just a hint of that "written to impress other writers" thing, which I simply have little patience for.
January 26, 2022
I truly don't know how to feel about this book. I could easily understand scenes, but the plot as a whole was extremely difficult to follow. It provided interesting commentary on privacy and technology, but after reading it I still don't get it. I'm confused. Really pretty language though...
December 21, 2019
so damn good.
January 4, 2020
Not sure about the ending...other than that I did enjoy this, a very unique literary style.
June 26, 2020
A brilliant and dark tale written presciently for our times.
August 1, 2020
Author uses words well, but in my opinion doesn’t tell a story well. I couldn’t find a way in to the story, gave up early on
abandoned
December 7, 2020this writing style isn't going to work for me for an audiobook, which is all the library has.
September 16, 2021
"Surveillance and espionage are part of everyday lives now."
From my interview with Tracy O'Neill on Full Stop: https://www.full-stop.net/2021/08/31/...
From my interview with Tracy O'Neill on Full Stop: https://www.full-stop.net/2021/08/31/...
May 16, 2024
Hard to follow but the prose is wonderful and the characters lovely. Weird book but I liked reading it.
December 8, 2025
Turned off by the writing style within the first 20 pages.
November 9, 2020
Too much response effort to get into it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews