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K Allado-McDowell wrote this book with GPT-3, mixing their own voice with that of the LLM. The only rule they followed while writing was to make it "as cringe as possible." I'm interested in how the book is steeped in the bodily (lots of sex) while also making clear the lack of connection in a world shaped by social media. The main character is lost in a world of people who are the "main character," looking for community in religious communities and raves. They never find that community - they mostly just offer hallucinatory episodes (GPT) is good at that.

Sally Rooney gets hate, but I'm convinced that people are made that she's so good at such a young age. She's great at relationships. I want to write a paper about her use of the word "Yes" in this book - it comes up during so many internal monologues, across characters. Characters stumble into an understanding of something and say "Yes." I'm not sure if it's a tick across her novels - I've never noticed it before.

Beautiful book.

"Even at this distance, Jupiter is incomprehensibly vast. We stare through the porthole at its soft milky hue, the watercolour whirls, repeating our unbelief. K looks at the settings on the screen showing the camera feed. Something in the rendering of Jupiter looks too virtual, too predictable. It's exactly like the images I've seen of it before. This is a senseless thing to say, of course, but I expected the gas giant to appear different when I saw it myself, so close. It looks too perfect, too controlled. It lacks independence, as if conforming to our expectations, which is ironically not what we expected at all. You're in shock, Tyler says. We all are. It isn't the camera, or the screen, K, it's us. We don't know how to see it." (357)

This is a beautifully written book that focuses on Camden, New Jersey, where I teach. I was also lucky enough to meet the author during a visit to campus. The strongest feature of this book is its ability to sit with the complexities of urban spaces that are constantly exploited, "revitalized," ignored, bulldozed, exoticized, and more. Romero grew up in Camden, and she wrote the book during a return visit to the city after her home was gone. It's a work of poetry, narrative, and analysis. It's rare to see an author pull of all of these at once.