Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Tell the Machine Goodnight

Tell the Machine Goodnight

Williams, Katie

Paperback

General FictionLiterary Fiction

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0525533133
ISBN13: 9780525533139
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: Jun 18 2019
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.10 Depth: 7.90
Language: English
Awards: Kirkus Prize
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.

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