Intense and propulsive ... Reads like a work of beautifully observed contemporary realism, an intimate and tender portrait of one mother’s day-to-day struggles to keep her children safe, and to find a little joy, in a damaged and dangerous world ... This sleek ride of a novel further cements Phillips’s position as one of our most profound writers of speculative fiction.
Phillips specializes in imparting a gentle shimmer of uncanniness to the intimacies of domestic realism ... The book shrewdly connects maternal guilt to consumerism ... Phillips keeps her world just one degree shy of recognizability, deftly turning the dials of similarity and difference, a mechanic fine-tuning eeriness instead of car engines ... Nimble.
Another reason that the stakes don’t feel quite as large as they could be is that the concept of being unrecognizable quickly loses its purchase ... Here’s the final turn of the superfluity screw: even in her vaunted facelessness, May has become supremely legible.
Eerie and electric ... Phillips’ skills as a stylist and keen observer of human nature keep us feverishly turning pages. And her unexpected humor lightens the mood ... Oddly beautiful ... Phillips has given us a lot to chew on, but there is also something comforting embedded in this cautionary tale: an homage to our adaptability, our capacity to love and our willingness, however reluctantly, to embrace the new.
It would be fair to call the work dystopian, or futuristic, or a harbinger, but the novel should not be reduced to its fizzy topicality. Phillips’s writing is perilously good and unsparingly perceptive as it probes at current concerns ... Perhaps Phillips’s greatest feat is the way the work’s technological clutter is at once essential to the story — the absent bunnies create catastrophic fallout for May — and, in another sense, beside the point. As May’s reputation rapidly unravels in the novel’s final third, Phillips explores the ways in which public scrutiny is not, at its core, a technological endeavor, even as technology abets the act. Marbled with glints of dark humor, this novel avoids sanctimony, offering revelation in its stead.
As dystopias go, reasonably breezy; it’s suitable for a coast-to-coast airline flight or an extended stay on the beach as an antidote to binge-watching the latest season of your favorite TV show. For those just dipping their toes into speculative fiction, the setting is relatable enough to not make you feel like (ahem) a stranger in a strange land.
Phillips renders the way love and family bonds—between partners, parents and children, and siblings—can act as a balm and an anchor amid the buffeting winds of a fast-changing, out-of-control world. A perceptive page-turner with a generous perspective on motherhood, identity, and the pitfalls of 'progress.'
