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The Enhancers
A polyvocal novel that follows three teenage friends as they encounter the pleasures and alienation that accompany coming of age in a techno-pharmaceutical society. The Enhancers questions who we are when valued most for our ability to process information. With mental augmentation as a baseline: how do we come to know ourselves and what does it take to break free?
“Fans of Ling Ma and Jennifer Egan, here is your next book. Anne K. Yoder, in a lyrical voice of the many, gives us a haunting tale of pharmacology and a story of boundaries: human, chemical and industrial. Where are those boundaries again? Where does a body start and end? Or, as Yoder puts it, How much information could one memory hold? In a text that is itself a wild, wonderfully written ride through a wormhole, The Enhancers thrills and horrifies with profound ramifications.” –Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book and The Seas
“The Enhancers asks, “How do I distinguish between what’s me and what’s chemical?” Animated by the absurdity of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, The Enhancers is a wildly original and contemporary tale about chemical augmentation, memory, yearning, and loss. Imagine the fearlessness and wild imagination of Jenny Erpenbeck if she had a background in the pharmaceutical industry and you might come close to approximating the tremendous brilliance of Anne Yoder.” –Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
Anne K. Yoder’s fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Fence, BOMB, Tin House, NY Tyrant, and MAKE, among other publications. She writes, lives, and occasionally dispenses pharmaceuticals in Chicago.
“Fans of Ling Ma and Jennifer Egan, here is your next book. Anne K. Yoder, in a lyrical voice of the many, gives us a haunting tale of pharmacology and a story of boundaries: human, chemical and industrial. Where are those boundaries again? Where does a body start and end? Or, as Yoder puts it, How much information could one memory hold? In a text that is itself a wild, wonderfully written ride through a wormhole, The Enhancers thrills and horrifies with profound ramifications.” –Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book and The Seas
“The Enhancers asks, “How do I distinguish between what’s me and what’s chemical?” Animated by the absurdity of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, The Enhancers is a wildly original and contemporary tale about chemical augmentation, memory, yearning, and loss. Imagine the fearlessness and wild imagination of Jenny Erpenbeck if she had a background in the pharmaceutical industry and you might come close to approximating the tremendous brilliance of Anne Yoder.” –Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
Anne K. Yoder’s fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Fence, BOMB, Tin House, NY Tyrant, and MAKE, among other publications. She writes, lives, and occasionally dispenses pharmaceuticals in Chicago.
- GenresFictionScience Fiction
340 pages, Paperback
Published October 4, 2022
5 people are currently reading
446 people want to read
About the author
Anne K. Yoder
1 book18 followersAnne K. Yoder is the author of the novel, The Enhancers, forthcoming from Meekling Press. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Fence, BOMB, Tin House, NY Tyrant, and MAKE, and has been recognized in Best American Nonrequired Reading. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks and is a staff writer for The Millions. She writes, lives, and occasionally dispenses pharmaceuticals in Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 11, 2024
A curious little book (literally – it’s a pocket-sized paperback). Every time I picked it up and read a couple of chapters, I enjoyed it. But every time I put it down, its details slid off my brain, as if I too was enveloped in the same chemical haze as Yoder’s characters.
Hannah lives in Lumena, a town dominated by a vast pharmaceutical factory. Is this the near future, or an alternate version of our world? It’s never entirely clear. Every aspect of life – school, work, socialising – revolves around a vast spectrum of (legal) drugs, most prominently Valedictorian or ‘V’; it’s supposed to make students perform better academically, but its awful side effects are swept under the carpet. There’s a lot of talk of ‘devices’ and ‘streaming’ etc – basically, contemporary references written about in such a way that they sound vaguely futuristic. I was also slightly thrown off by the characters’ use of slang, much of which already sounds dated just two years after the book was published (honestly, I never want to see ‘obvi’ again in my life). The overall effect of Lumena is one of distracted surrealism, retro futurism, like a film set in the 22nd century but shot on burned celluloid.
It all goes a bit ‘cli-fi’ in the final third as a disaster shakes everyone loose of Lumena’s grip. With Hannah’s friend Celia hospitalised, she’s led to wonder: ‘who was Celia without supplements? I mean who were any of us, really?’ This section pivots away from the smooth whimsy of the earlier chapters; the characters explore their relationships to one another amid post-Lumena life, a return to something more primordial (with added visions of chimps). It reminded me of some other slightly frustrating, difficult-to-pin-down novels about strange situations and ideas: Lamb by Matt Hill, Girls Against God by Jenny Hval, The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. I’d definitely recommend it if you loved any of those.
Hannah lives in Lumena, a town dominated by a vast pharmaceutical factory. Is this the near future, or an alternate version of our world? It’s never entirely clear. Every aspect of life – school, work, socialising – revolves around a vast spectrum of (legal) drugs, most prominently Valedictorian or ‘V’; it’s supposed to make students perform better academically, but its awful side effects are swept under the carpet. There’s a lot of talk of ‘devices’ and ‘streaming’ etc – basically, contemporary references written about in such a way that they sound vaguely futuristic. I was also slightly thrown off by the characters’ use of slang, much of which already sounds dated just two years after the book was published (honestly, I never want to see ‘obvi’ again in my life). The overall effect of Lumena is one of distracted surrealism, retro futurism, like a film set in the 22nd century but shot on burned celluloid.
It all goes a bit ‘cli-fi’ in the final third as a disaster shakes everyone loose of Lumena’s grip. With Hannah’s friend Celia hospitalised, she’s led to wonder: ‘who was Celia without supplements? I mean who were any of us, really?’ This section pivots away from the smooth whimsy of the earlier chapters; the characters explore their relationships to one another amid post-Lumena life, a return to something more primordial (with added visions of chimps). It reminded me of some other slightly frustrating, difficult-to-pin-down novels about strange situations and ideas: Lamb by Matt Hill, Girls Against God by Jenny Hval, The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. I’d definitely recommend it if you loved any of those.
October 9, 2022
Anne Yoder's debut is an ambitious novel that captures the current Zeitgeist rather harrowingly. The protagonist is a smart teen (think EUPHORIA, but darker) exploring the possibilities of a pharmacologically enhanced existence, almost a given in the small, bleak town she lives in, whose main industry is a pharmaceutical factory, pumping out all manner of pills. (Yoder's names and taglines for the pills are hilarious). The novel deals with ecological despair, helicopter parenting, and the domination of Big Pharma in our lives. This could also be a screed against our cultural obsession with self-improvement or self-enhancement at the expense of just being human (thanks, capitalism!).
Yoder's style is fittingly deadpan, but there are so many lyrical moments that pop out. In a hospital scene: "I sat on a puke-brown padded bench. Why did everything in the hospital elicit sickness?" Or in describing the main character's dysphoria: ...I had a wanting that would never leave and I carried this emptiness like a pocket within me..."
An impressive debut. Looking forward to reading more!
Yoder's style is fittingly deadpan, but there are so many lyrical moments that pop out. In a hospital scene: "I sat on a puke-brown padded bench. Why did everything in the hospital elicit sickness?" Or in describing the main character's dysphoria: ...I had a wanting that would never leave and I carried this emptiness like a pocket within me..."
An impressive debut. Looking forward to reading more!
December 28, 2023
The Enhancers paints a very dystopian picture of a profit-above-all-else society where performance enhancing drugs for the mind are not only encouraged, but almost forced for any kind of upward mobility in society. This is a likely end state for our current hyper-capitalistic society, where humans are squeezed for every single drop of productivity they have in them (or, is put in them through the PEDs).
Anne’s writing allows us to empathize with the characters, both Hannah and Harold, her father. Harold’s case is particularly sad, as it is rather clear his brain has been addled by use of the mind drugs. He’s forgetful, confused, and in quite a sorry state.
After the catastrophe in the book’s second half, I must confess mild disappointment with a return to near-normalcy in the book’s concluding pages, but there is certainly enough horror already spread throughout the book.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable read, and I look forward to reading Anne’s future work.
Anne’s writing allows us to empathize with the characters, both Hannah and Harold, her father. Harold’s case is particularly sad, as it is rather clear his brain has been addled by use of the mind drugs. He’s forgetful, confused, and in quite a sorry state.
After the catastrophe in the book’s second half, I must confess mild disappointment with a return to near-normalcy in the book’s concluding pages, but there is certainly enough horror already spread throughout the book.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable read, and I look forward to reading Anne’s future work.
October 23, 2022
Loved this debut novel! Loved the scientific tie-ins with the pharmaceutical information in this dystopic coming of age story. Lots to ponder for our current world so dependent on drugs and therefore, drug companies.
December 11, 2025
I loved The Enhancers, a polyvocal novel in which three teenage girls (and a few other entities) articulate a hyper-capitalist landscape running on the incessant fumes of the pharmaceutical—and its pills, powders, and strict surveillance mechanisms that shape their every experience.
July 25, 2024
more like a rough draft than a book
August 20, 2024
Enjoyable read. Cool premise and setup in the first half, but took a predictable, cookie cutter dystopian twist (very heavy on the Covid-coding) in the second half.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews