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Riverhead Books
June 2019
On Sale: June 18, 2019
304 pages
ISBN: 0525533133
EAN: 9780525533139
Kindle: B076YZJR5P
Trade Size / e-Book (reprint)
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Science Fiction
Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the
Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine,
she provides customers with personalized recommendations for
greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office
manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an
emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive
kid who has forged an unconventional path through
adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in
being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own
kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants
nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or
for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless,
her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall
under the parameters of her job--not as happiness
technician, and not as mother, either. Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from
within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine
Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining
story about the advance of technology and the ways that it
can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie
Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with
positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What
happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth,
humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective
unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little
more clearly.
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