Touch
Fiction
G. P. Putnam's Sons
May 30, 2017
E-book
320
Publisher via Penguin First to Read
Sloane Jacobsen is the most powerful trend forecaster in the world (she was the foreseer of the swipe ), and global fashion, lifestyle, and tech companies pay to hear her opinions about the future. Her recent forecasts on the family are unwavering: the world is over-populated, and with unemployment, college costs, and food prices all on the rise, having children is an extravagant indulgence.
So it s no surprise when the tech giant Mammoth hires Sloane to lead their groundbreaking annual conference, celebrating the voluntarily childless. But not far into her contract, Sloane begins to sense the undeniable signs of a movement against electronics that will see people embracing compassion, empathy, and in-personism again. She s struggling with the fact that her predictions are hopelessly out of sync with her employer's mission and that her closest personal relationship is with her self-driving car when her partner, the French neo-sensualist Roman Bellard, reveals that he is about to publish an op-ed on the death of penetrative sex a post-sexual treatise that instantly goes viral. Despite the risks to her professional reputation, Sloane is nevertheless convinced that her instincts are the right ones, and goes on a quest to defend real life human interaction, while finally allowing in the love and connectedness she's long been denying herself.
My review:
This is one of those books that I fear is going to be abandoned by some readers before getting to the good parts. I had to get to about page 70 (pretty far for a lot of people) before I started really tuning into the story. I love the premise for this, with the author taking a good look at the impact technology has in consuming our lives, and the main protagonist (a trend forecaster) pulling for a time where humans revert back to interactions involving touch. There was an interesting flip side to the argument, given by none other than her long time boyfriend (who walks around everywhere in a fully enclosed Zentai suit!). And then there was my favorite character in the entire book....the personality behind Sloane's driverless car! The book is well written, although some of the characters could have been a bit more fleshed out to make the story more interesting, particularly at the beginning. I really liked the dynamics with Sloane's family, which are sort of inserted when needed, but then left dangling. In the end, I felt that all the characters remained true to who they were, and I was satisfied with the conclusion.
A good book once you get into the meat of the story, but for me that took about a quarter of the way in. And.....I need an Anastasia in my life!
This book was given to me to read and review through the Penguin First to Read program. Click this link to learn more about the program.
