Made for Love by Alissa Nutting
My rating: 4/5 cats
“A robot officiated at my wedding,” said Hazel. “Let me start there.”
this is one of those books where if i try to summarize the plot, it will sound like the opium dreams of a maniac. which i’m fine with for myself, but then you might dismiss this book as the opium dreams of a maniac and steer clear of it. hence, i will try to keep any content-related remarks pretty general, so no one runs off in fright. this is indeed pure crazytown in concept, but she wrangles the crazy into a well-executed and structured story that, for all its flashy weirdness, is oddly moving.
at its widest-angle view, it’s about love. love for family, romantic love, self-love, love of power and legacy, the confusing love for another species, the practical and efficient love between a man and a sex doll. it’s also about technology. and the effect of unchecked technology on human connection when it is fetishized over more “natural” experiences; in a cultish corporate community where reliance upon technology was perceived as a personal strength and the degree of one’s reliance measured that person’s value.
it’s about one character removing herself from the world of robots and mocrochips and (literally) embracing the ugly, rugged, scarred essence of human existence, embodied by a man whose handshake was an exfoliant, and who is as far away from the sleek singularity as it gets:
If there was one person in the world who could make someone better at chopping things down with an ax just by having sex with him, this was the guy.
and it’s about another character whose sexual preferences take a sudden and unexpected turn, leaving him with a longing for a connection impossible to satisfy. compared to his needs, hazel’s father’s relationships with sex dolls seems commonplace and simply practical.
so, yeah – love, technology, the loneliness of people who never learned how to experience healthy human connections either through the nature of a sociopathic-tinged brain, the nurture of an unemotional upbringing:
“Are you sad Mom’s dying?” she asked.
Her father nodded. “You know I don’t like change.”
or a clinical approach to life that prioritizes machinelike efficiency over messy humanity.
it’s also pretty damn funny:
Liver had a lot of smells that seemed automotive in nature, so being on her back beneath him, Hazel thought about the flat rolling carts mechanics lie down on to slide beneath cars, and the sex became a little fun the way it might be fun to roll out from below a vehicle and then roll back under again, and again.
that’s all i feel i should say about this – it’s a weird little book, but weird in a very appealing way.
and that cover…. that’s something else.
airbrushed majesty.
