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A review by archytas
Smart Ovens for Lonely People by Elizabeth Tan
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
"Degenerate utopias, however, are not critical; they’re just empty reproductions of what is already familiar to you. They might look different from the real world, superficially, but they ultimately protect the cosy lie that worlds can only be one way—which means, most of the time, predicated on capitalism."
Smart ovens for lonely people is anything but a degenerate utopia. These stories are weird and funny and relatable and infused with a kind of desperately sad undertone, which is much more fun than it sounds. In the opener, half a page long, a piece of playground equipment is blown down a street, appearing to take on fish form in the writers, or ours, imaginations or reality, setting the stage for a collection that uses imagination to cope with a kind of existential terror.
Tan's characters live in worlds with cat-shaped counselling ovens, companies which fall in love, sentient fungal networks, restaurants catering to those so dependent on feeding tubes they have forgotten how to eat with ease. Some stories just capture the sense of being thrown off-kilter we have all got used to: On a single day, washing machines mysteriously empty midwash throwing social compacts off-kilter. Others evoke the sense of powerlessness, especially a couple set around spies held together by love, or a father who can't protect his children from a threat they pose. In this version of our future/present, people date and are annoyed by coworkers, sit on a hillside and watch how pretty the end of the world is. Tan's characters feel like us, bewildered by a world which is changing, beset by petty details, sometimes consumed by grief. The ideas here amuse, entertain and provoke, but Tan never shakes, or I think wants to, the ultimate feeling that we are watching our world dissolve underneath us, while we distract ourselves from our helplessness by looking for moments of joy. There are hints of more here to, that in choosing to reflect our world differently, we can both confront it and imagine something fundamentally better to create.
Smart ovens for lonely people is anything but a degenerate utopia. These stories are weird and funny and relatable and infused with a kind of desperately sad undertone, which is much more fun than it sounds. In the opener, half a page long, a piece of playground equipment is blown down a street, appearing to take on fish form in the writers, or ours, imaginations or reality, setting the stage for a collection that uses imagination to cope with a kind of existential terror.
Tan's characters live in worlds with cat-shaped counselling ovens, companies which fall in love, sentient fungal networks, restaurants catering to those so dependent on feeding tubes they have forgotten how to eat with ease. Some stories just capture the sense of being thrown off-kilter we have all got used to: On a single day, washing machines mysteriously empty midwash throwing social compacts off-kilter. Others evoke the sense of powerlessness, especially a couple set around spies held together by love, or a father who can't protect his children from a threat they pose. In this version of our future/present, people date and are annoyed by coworkers, sit on a hillside and watch how pretty the end of the world is. Tan's characters feel like us, bewildered by a world which is changing, beset by petty details, sometimes consumed by grief. The ideas here amuse, entertain and provoke, but Tan never shakes, or I think wants to, the ultimate feeling that we are watching our world dissolve underneath us, while we distract ourselves from our helplessness by looking for moments of joy. There are hints of more here to, that in choosing to reflect our world differently, we can both confront it and imagine something fundamentally better to create.