Tell the Machine Goodnight: A Novel
Jun 2018 · Penguin
4.2star
6 reviewsreport
Ebook
304
Pages
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About this ebook
FINALIST FOR 2018 KIRKUS PRIZE
NAMED ONE OF THE "BEST LITERARY FICTION OF 2018' BY KIRKUS REVIEWS
"Sci-fi in its most perfect expression…Reading it is like having a lucid dream of six years from next week, filled with people you don't know, but will." —NPR
"[Williams’s] wit is sharp, but her touch is light, and her novel is a winner." – San Francisco Chronicle
"Between seasons of Black Mirror, look to Katie Williams' debut novel." —Refinery29
Smart and inventive, a page-turner that considers the elusive definition of happiness.
Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion?
Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either.
Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.
NAMED ONE OF THE "BEST LITERARY FICTION OF 2018' BY KIRKUS REVIEWS
"Sci-fi in its most perfect expression…Reading it is like having a lucid dream of six years from next week, filled with people you don't know, but will." —NPR
"[Williams’s] wit is sharp, but her touch is light, and her novel is a winner." – San Francisco Chronicle
"Between seasons of Black Mirror, look to Katie Williams' debut novel." —Refinery29
Smart and inventive, a page-turner that considers the elusive definition of happiness.
Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion?
Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either.
Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.
Ratings and reviews
4.2
6 reviews
Gaele Hi
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August 6, 2018
Focused on the “quick fix” need that seems to have overtaken society, this story focuses on Pearl and those people who are part of her life, as she navigates the world and all of life’s stressors while trying to achieve happiness. What if there was a technology or machine that would actually hand you the key to your happiness in an almost paint by number set of steps? Would you use that, or rely on the tried and true? Well, Pearl is in need of guaranteed happiness, as her life is far from smooth. Her son Rhett clings to his melancholy and struggles with anorexia, her boss Carter who wants nothing more than power, and will manipulate the “machine” called Apricity to provide him those steps, her ex-husband and his new wife – both with secrets and lastly, a celebrity who has commissioned Pearl to create daily ‘readings’ from and for Apricity, even when the LAST thing she would want to do is deal with yet another faceless machine. Told in a series of vignettes that explore the character’s lives as they seek connectedness and happiness with varying degrees of failure – the strangeness of the world described is surprisingly prescient in these times of never offline and desk-bound interactions with few to no face to face meetings, debates or relationships. Alternately bizarre and fascinating (who doesn’t love to people-watch) the story has a sense of ‘it couldn’t happen moments that quickly become I just saw that. And not all of those revelations are particularly comfortable, even as they make the book hard to look away from. Williams draws readers into these lives, connected yet surviving on different planes, all in search of the same thing – an honest and real connection that brings happiness, and the multitude of ways they find the pathway laid out by the machine to be yet one more step away from their goals and the people who they share their lives with. A favorite for the ideas, characters and questions that arise with each new moment, leaving the impression long after the last page is turned. I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via Edelweiss for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.
Leroy B
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October 20, 2020
I don't know why I enjoyed reading this book, but I did.
1 person found this review helpful
Amy
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June 18, 2023
beautiful. wrll written and very descriptive. perfect
About the author
Katie Williams's short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Williams earned her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches writing and literature at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She is the author of two young adult novels, The Space Between Trees and Absent. This is her first novel for adults.
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