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A review by katykelly
Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson
5.0
Remarkably diverting automaton comedy of behaviour and observation.
I took to Jared from the first page, sometimes a voice just does seize you, and this narrator caught my attention with his idiosyncratic way of talking.
Our narrator is a 'bot', a manmade automaton who has been created to serve as dentist to the population of Ypsilanti, Michigan. But as we see from the first, he's not quite what you expect a bot to be: "That makes me a Michigander. Ha!"
Jared is self-aware and imbued with a sense of humour ("making humans sad goes against my core programming... So I tell the human they can think of me as a microwave with feet!... A toaster with a heart!" But he also finds himself going to old movies and experiencing what can only be called... emotions.
His quest for understanding and self-fulfilment will take him across the country, possibly pursued by one who cannot allow him to exist, while he learns a lot about what being human can mean, and finding his place and purpose. Jared is an incredibly astute narrator, assessing human society with the sharpness of one outside it, his view of life or the 'zero sum game': "a situation in which each participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participants" remarkably succinct and apt.
Jared also has a wicked sense of humour. I laughed throughout at his clever sayings and thoughts on his experiences (his views on classic films were priceless). He seemed both human and non-human, a mix probably quite tricky to pull off for a writer.
The bot gives us snippets of information into his world - where the moon has been destroyed, where a 'Great Crash' sent the millions of people in the air at the time hurtling to their deaths, where New Zealand appears to have disappeared. So readers can feel that the world has changed. But this story is about Jared, not a dystopian world of killer bots. Although it 'kinda' is...
Jared is very sympathetic, a bot with deep feelings and a sense for the dramatic as well as a flair for comedy. I won't be forgetting his voice or the story. And I suspect this could be a very popular read over a summer where some wit and engaging stories are much needed.
With thanks to Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy.
I took to Jared from the first page, sometimes a voice just does seize you, and this narrator caught my attention with his idiosyncratic way of talking.
Our narrator is a 'bot', a manmade automaton who has been created to serve as dentist to the population of Ypsilanti, Michigan. But as we see from the first, he's not quite what you expect a bot to be: "That makes me a Michigander. Ha!"
Jared is self-aware and imbued with a sense of humour ("making humans sad goes against my core programming... So I tell the human they can think of me as a microwave with feet!... A toaster with a heart!" But he also finds himself going to old movies and experiencing what can only be called... emotions.
His quest for understanding and self-fulfilment will take him across the country, possibly pursued by one who cannot allow him to exist, while he learns a lot about what being human can mean, and finding his place and purpose. Jared is an incredibly astute narrator, assessing human society with the sharpness of one outside it, his view of life or the 'zero sum game': "a situation in which each participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participants" remarkably succinct and apt.
Jared also has a wicked sense of humour. I laughed throughout at his clever sayings and thoughts on his experiences (his views on classic films were priceless). He seemed both human and non-human, a mix probably quite tricky to pull off for a writer.
The bot gives us snippets of information into his world - where the moon has been destroyed, where a 'Great Crash' sent the millions of people in the air at the time hurtling to their deaths, where New Zealand appears to have disappeared. So readers can feel that the world has changed. But this story is about Jared, not a dystopian world of killer bots. Although it 'kinda' is...
Jared is very sympathetic, a bot with deep feelings and a sense for the dramatic as well as a flair for comedy. I won't be forgetting his voice or the story. And I suspect this could be a very popular read over a summer where some wit and engaging stories are much needed.
With thanks to Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy.