MixedThe Women\'s Review of BooksMackintosh’s engagement with science fiction offers fruitful possibilities for writing a contemporary female character who overtly rejects the type of nurturing, earthy motherhood we still seem to want ... There are brief moments when Mackintosh’s depiction of Solvig as mechanical offers new aesthetic possibilities for the domestic novel ... The subtlety with which Mackintosh reclaims the automatic and the digital as comforting and motherly is to be applauded ... But on the large scale, Mackintosh’s depiction of Solvig as a kind of automaton undoes the narrative premise she so carefully sets up...The narrative, overall, seems wildly unmotivated. It never provides a satisfactory stimulus for either of Solvig’s initial choices...Mackintosh seems to shy away from the big events in her characters’ lives which might impel them...Perhaps some will read it asdaring and rebellious for Mackintosh to consistently let Solvig off the hook, and maybe it is. But I’m not sure that it resonates with the importance of choice for contemporary women. Or maybe this: it just doesn’t make for a compelling novel ... Like its central relationship, Mackintosh’s novel suffers from a problem of scale: What works on the small scale seems to sabotage the novel’s larger project. Mackintosh’s writing can be beautiful; her metaphors are weird and thought-provoking. But I walk away from the novel wondering if anything carried any weight at all.
