Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lalami (The Other Americans) delivers a stirring dystopian tale of dwindling privacy and freedom in the digital age. In the late 2030s, Sara T. Hussein, 38, a Muslim American art archivist, is detained by officials from the Risk Assessment Administration, who claim data recorded by her Dreamsaver implant, which was originally developed to treat sleep apnea, predicts she will murder her husband. She's held at a repurposed elementary school for "observation," which stretches on for nearly a year, and forced to work in the de facto prison's laundry room. "Retainees," as prisoners like Sara are called, are promised their freedom if they're compliant and they stop dreaming about potential crimes, but she's released only after making a nuisance by organizing a work stoppage. She returns home to her husband and twin toddlers, who urge her to stay out of trouble, but she immediately starts planning to help her friends at the retention center regain their freedom, partnering with a former retainee whom she met inside. The premise calls to mind Philip K. Dick's The Minority Report, but Lalami's version is chillingly original, echoing widespread fears about the abuse of surveillance technology, and she balances high-concept speculative elements with deep character work. This surreal story feels all too plausible. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Mar.)Correction: A previous version of this review mistakenly described one of the secondary characters as a Dreamsaver informant.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Award-winning Lalami's (Conditional Citizens) new novel starts with Sara's arrest by the Risk Assessment Administration after data from her dreams indicates that she will soon commit a crime against her husband. As a result, she is required to spend 21 days under observation, along with others convicted of dream deviations. While many of the novel's devices are commonplace tropes--AI surveillance, for example--Lalami's distinctive writing style adds a layered edge, effecting a strange, reverberating quietness that abruptly yet elegantly morphs into critiques of systemic inequities in the book's dystopian world. The story feels urgent and real, but this is not a fast-paced thriller, although elements of that genre come into play. Instead, Lalami leans toward the speed of thoughts, their lack of linearity, and the strange overlap between the feeling and thinking worlds of people's inner lives, here made visible and tactile through AI. VERDICT A beautifully executed, plot-driven, yet cerebral meditation on AI. Perfect for those looking for something to read while awaiting the forthcoming film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun.--Emily Bowles
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman is detained under an American regime where even dreams are being surveilled. Lalami's stellar fifth novel concerns Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American woman who's returning home from a conference in London to her family in L.A. when she's held by the Risk Assessment Administration, a federal agency that uses biometric data to assess citizens' "pre-crime" tendencies. She's done nothing troubling, but her "risk score" is high enough to force a stay at an all-woman "retention center" that's effectively a prison. Though her stay is supposed to be brief, the smallest hiccups lead to extensions, and the private-prison firm contracted by RAA charges extortionate rates for everything from emails to clean sheets; Sara and the other retainees are also expected to work to lower their scores, labor that partly involves feeding AI models. There are echoes ofThe Handmaid's Tale here--as Margaret Atwood does in that book, Lalami builds a convincing near-future dystopia out of current events, and Sara plots a similar small-scale resistance. But Lalami's scenario is unique and well-imagined--interspersed report sheets, transcripts, and terms-of-service lingo have a realistic, poignant lyricism that exposes the cruel bureaucracy in which Sara is trapped. (Not for nothing does she have a Borges book checked out of the library.) And the story exposes the particular perniciousness of big tech's capacity to exploit our every movement, indeed practically every thought. It's a fiction-workshop cliche that dreams are unnecessary, but here they play a crucial role in the plot, opening up questions of what we're sacrificing in the name of convenience and safety. The novel's striking message is summarized in Sara's retort to a bureaucrat who tells her the data doesn't lie: "It doesn't tell the truth, either." An engrossing and troubling dystopian tale. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
