A marriage / family drama for the AI age, I guess.

I always feel a little bit bad when I don't like a book. And, truly, in this case, "dislike" is too strong a term. It was fine! It started angsty but formless, with some tragedy and a bit of mystique, and it continued likewise the whole through. I cared about the characters and shook my head sadly at their emotional foibles. It's possible that if I had read fewer novels told in this vignette style lately that my review would be full star higher because it would feel more original.

On the other hand, maybe I feel this way because Crossan just didn't have much to say! The treatments of AI and of sex dolls both felt rote: "oh no, we'll be alienated from those around us! Of course personalized companionship offers it's own possibilities for combating loneliness etc. Much to consider!" Genuinely don't think the level of analysis was any deeper than that. (Of course possible that a reader with different priors on AI or more generosity would find more there.)

I thought

the twist about her step-brother in the third act

was unnecessary.

It was unrelated to the AI theme, which should have been the meat of the book. And yeah it was tragic but like. To what end? Just misery porn? Maybe it's because Dolores has been asking us/herself for the whole book what fucked her up emotionally, and Crossan wanted to give the reader closure there - satisfy our curiosity. To me, "sometimes (read: always, really), people are just broken" is a more compelling story than "sometimes your brother diddles you".

Okay. Things I liked! I'll stop being so negative. It read easily and quickly. It was sometimes beautiful. I liked the characters as people, especially Leonard and Jacinta. And I think that on a technical level, the atmosphere was constructed well. A mix of lengths in the vignettes, from a few pages to a single line, and the shortest ones were all suitably suggestive of,, something. (That's one way of stating the crux of the problem: the tone never  developed beyond "suggestive of something".) But they were suggestive! I I just opened the book aapt random and hit, "Zoey is beautiful. It's impossible to pretend otherwise. Especially her mouth. Silently it whispers: yes, please."

Here's two more quotes I liked:
> But David does not believe in nuance. There is science and faith, fact and fiction, good and evil, innocence and blame.
> I knew very early on in our relationship that there were some things I would always have to keep from David, some things he would never understand.
> 
> Leonard judged all his relationships on whether or not he felt he could be intimate with the men he met. I said, "What does that even mean?"
> "It means letting someone see bits of you that are normally kept hidden."
> "I doubt you hide your bits," I told him.
> He hadn't the energy to argue with me. But it did make me wonder about honesty and love and whether omissions were lies. How could they be? How could we possibly tell another person everything about ourselves? It would take a lifetime. It would be incredibly boring.

> A woman said to her spouse, "Did you hear the one about the wife who asked her husband if he could feel pains across his body as though someone had a voodoo doll of him?"
> He said, "No, why?"
> The wife disappeared upstairs then called down to her husband, "How about now?"
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