Olivia Sudjic

An electrifying novel of blood ties, online identities, and our tormented efforts to connect in the digital age. At twenty-three, Alice Hare leaves England for New York. She falls in love with Manhattan, and becomes fixated on Mizuko Himura, an intriguing Japanese writer whose life has strange parallels to her own. As Alice closes in on Mizuko, her 'internet twin', realities multiply and fact and fiction begin to blur. The relationship between the two women exposes a tangle of lies and sexual encounters. Three families collide as Alice learns that the swiftest answer to an ancient question - where do we come from? - can now be found online. (amazon)… (más)

between 2.5 and 3. this is really well written but a bit overlong and dense. (i'm not sure what i'd take out, though.) it's not hard to read, but there are a lot of details that pop back up later, and if you don't remember exactly what she was talking about, you miss a connection or a point the author is making. there's a lot in this book, and it's interesting both from a story perspective and a social commentary perspective, but i'm not sure i enjoyed it for the first half or so. it got intense and fast then, and lots from the first half became more clear, but i think readers would be better served with a more chronological account. or at least not jumping back and forth, a week here or there, again and again. i'm not sure what purpose that served. maybe just to disorient us, like alice was feeling. (the time jumps aren't typical, and certain periods of time are repeated a few times, so it's not just back and forth between two periods of time; it's kind of all over the place.) her statements about how social media is in our life, and how it jumbles what should be shown outwardly versus inwardly (and how people handle that messiness) were the most interesting part of the book for me. ("Man had such impenetrable means to stop the outside world from coming in, and so little to stop our inside world from surging out...") the way that writing something down (in a letter, sure, but specifically on social media) makes it real, and erasing it therefore makes it go away, or erases that part of someone's life and identity. there was lots more - on identity in particular, on adoption, on stalking/obsession, on relationship, on responsibility, on genetics, on sex, on physics, on events happening in early/mid 2016. i feel like i'd like this book more if i read it again, but i don't know that i want to. and i wouldn't say that i enjoyed the read, but it was interesting and lends to good discussion.… (más)

I read it for the Lesbian Book group. We all agreed, that it was NOT a lesbian book. Most people did not like it, and disliked all the characters. I wasn't sure, going into the group, how I felt about it. I knew that I didn't exactly like it, the characters were not very likeable, and the book somewhat creeped me out and interfered with my sleep Monday night (when I finished it, late at night, because I wanted it read for the book group.)

The book centers around a young woman, Alice Hare, who is dealing with a lot of complicated identity issues and who is very unconnected to other people. Through the internet, she develops a stalker-ish relationship with a Japanese woman writer, Mizuko. Alice does some really not-good things in pursuit of this relationship.

In the end, I decided that it was a good book. Lots of room for thought, and I figured anything that made me feel that uncomfortable, must have had some depth. The book does have a non-linear and sometimes repetitive format. That bothered some people, I thought it was a reflection of how Alice moved through the world, and so I was OK with it.… (más)