beautiful soup reviewed The Unseen World by Liz Moore
I resent that this book made me cry a little.
4 stars
Honestly I went into this book with low expectations, it seemed very similar to several books my book club read last year, and I often lose patience with storylines about uncovering deep family secrets. However, to my surprise and delight, I could hardly put this book down.
There's the slightest bit of scifi here, an exploration of artificial intelligence that I thought worked very well. (I love the idea of modern AI growing out of an old ELIZA-type program.) But the heart of the book is the intense and unconventional relationship between a daughter and her father. I loved Ada from the beginning. She's the kind of girl who packs seven books in her overnight bag; in other words, incredibly relatable, in spite of her unique upbringing. She is stuck between two worlds, the seen and unseen; well-loved but profoundly lonely. ("She often felt as if there was something fundamentally …
Honestly I went into this book with low expectations, it seemed very similar to several books my book club read last year, and I often lose patience with storylines about uncovering deep family secrets. However, to my surprise and delight, I could hardly put this book down.
There's the slightest bit of scifi here, an exploration of artificial intelligence that I thought worked very well. (I love the idea of modern AI growing out of an old ELIZA-type program.) But the heart of the book is the intense and unconventional relationship between a daughter and her father. I loved Ada from the beginning. She's the kind of girl who packs seven books in her overnight bag; in other words, incredibly relatable, in spite of her unique upbringing. She is stuck between two worlds, the seen and unseen; well-loved but profoundly lonely. ("She often felt as if there was something fundamentally incorrect about her, as if she were caught between two worlds, a citizen of neither.")
Her father David is also fascinating and extremely sympathetic, in spite of his flaws, particularly as you learn his story. (In fact all of Moore's characters seemed like full, complex people and I cared about all of them.) But I couldn't help but think that Ada was as much of an experiment to him as his computer program. He loved her deeply, but he was creating his ideal childhood instead of responding to what Ada needed. All parents program their children the best way they know how, I guess.
It's also a novel about grief, most particularly the grief of watching someone you love disappear in front of you, and realizing you didn't really know them in the first place. It's a very intimate novel but I think it avoided being saccharine or overly melodramatic. Not my usual fare, but I think I was in the right place in my life to appreciate it.
A lesser writer would have turned this into a novel that would have made me roll my eyes. Instead I will freely admit that I cried a little as I finished it. I hope Moore publishes another novel in the future, I'll show up for it.
