Sharply attuned to the costs of employment: financial, emotional, psychic ... Castillo’s close third-person narration, and her unerring ear for social performance, make for a novel that is often baroquely funny, full of barbed observations that detonate like precision-guided bombs ... Castillo favors long sentences that twist and kink like a delirious garden hose, delighted by the unruly spillage of thought ... Succeeds in rendering visible the often invisible dirty work of the digital era.
I’m not sure I’ve ever read such a perfect rendering of a woman suppressing everything inside of her to earn a paycheck, to keep going, to get the job done ... A novel is, at its best, a mirror for the mess of the human experience and all the feelings of love, despair, fear, longing, and grief that come with it. Moderation is that, and it is also a mirror for the modern world, a place where we hide from ourselves in numerous new ways: social media, situationships, video games, virtual reality. Girlie embodies that repression, and as the glossy surface of her character cracks, we catch glimpses of what lies beneath.
This setup gives Castillo a long satirical runway, even some room for light sci-fi—all to the good. But Moderation is really a romantic comedy of the I-fell-for-my-boss variety. Though the love story left me cold...I applaud its trappings, which are daringly loveless, even churlish ... Castillo, despite some missteps, has the confidence to pull it off—but it’s a dangerous game.
Blistering ... Moderation surrounds a complex, conflicted protagonist with a host of vividly sketched supporting characters ... Skillfully plotted ... A brilliantly atmospheric set piece that mingles humor and pathos ... Written in hurtling prose that fires off provocative insights on almost every page, Moderation marks an impressive step forward for this gifted writer.
Castillo has important things to say about the internet, trauma and true connection, but it’s a shame that this novel wasn’t polished to make it clearer or more enjoyable to read.
Canny ... Castillo has potent themes to work with ... Disappointingly, she seems more content to skim surfaces than probe depths. Her narratorial tactic of choice is to tell and tell ... Not without merits. Castillo is a writer of razor-sharp acuity who takes seriously the sinister instrumentalisation of storytelling, in a world increasingly veering right.
You’d be forgiven, with this fascinating frontier between real and fake constructed so compellingly by Castillo, for expecting Moderation to be a tale of corporate intrigue, with Girlie’s content moderator straddling the two worlds as she uncovers big tech’s dark secrets. For better or for worse, however, what results is a love story. It is admittedly a keenly felt love story, and one whose participants must navigate not only the pitfalls of a workplace romance but the perils of doing so half in person and half in pixels. But Castillo’s writing is so sharp that it feels like a missed opportunity to fully explore the implications of the world of Playground ... Girlie’s story is a wry and witty commentary on how the real has been swamped by the virtual, and how moderation of any kind is just an illusion.
What a strangely vexatious book this is. If it had stopped on page 291 I would have given it a wholly positive review, with points verging on the superlative. But it continues to page 307, and – to be blunt – blows it. That disappointment does not erase its virtues, but it does tarnish them ... As I hope you see, lots and lots of meaty ideas, political sass and scrunchy wit. But, to misquote Ol’ Blue Eyes, 'and then you go and spoil it all by saying somethin’ stupid like she loves him.' Suddenly Fleabag turns into Bridget Jones.
Sharp, compelling ... While cleverly interrogating interactions, communication, and relationships, Castillo again proves to be an enviably erudite chronicler of (racist) history, power structures, identity politics, and socioeconomic inequities
A winning combination of cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned romance ... Updates old-fashioned romance for the social media and virtual reality age.
Elaine Castillo’s writing is perfectly dialed in—attuned to her characters on a level that few can achieve. Her wit, incisive understanding and ability to create a complete picture in just a couple well-structured sentences made America Is Not the Heart and How to Read Now major hits, and those gifts are all present once again in her latest novel ... a sharp, absorbing, potent work by one of modern fiction’s smartest voices, and you’ll want it on your reading list.
Masterful ... Castillo shifts seamlessly in scale and tone, from a wide-angled systems novel to a love story, and from barbed satire to staggering emotional depth. It’s a triumph.
