Elvia Wilk

"A fascinating near-future exploration of relationships, sustainability, and power. An extraordinarily accomplished debut novel." —Jeff VanderMeer, author of Borne and Annihilation “Elvia Wilk’s Oval is a marvel. At the core of this seductive, acute, superbly-contemporary update of mid-period J.G. Ballard lies a deep-beating, deep-dreaming heart.” —Jonathan Lethem In the near future, Berlin’s real estate is being flipped in the name of “sustainability,” only to make the city even more unaffordable; artists are employed by corporations as consultants, and the weather is acting strange. When Anja and Louis are offered a rent-free home on an artificial mountain—yet another eco-friendly initiative run by a corporation—they seize the opportunity, but it isn’t long before the experimental house begins malfunctioning. After Louis’s mother dies, Anja is convinced he has changed. At work, Louis has become obsessed with a secret project: a pill called Oval that temporarily rewires the user’s brain to be more generous. While Anja is horrified, Louis believes he has found the solution to Berlin’s income inequality. Oval is a fascinating portrait of the unbalanced relationships that shape our world, as well as a prescient warning of what the future may hold.

A Novel

Oval

"In the near future, Berlin's real estate is being flipped in the name of "sustainability," only to make the city even more unaffordable; artists are employed by corporations as consultants; and the weather is acting strange. In search of affordable housing, young couple Anja and Louis move into a community on an artificial mountain, The Berg--yet another "eco-friendly" initiative run by a corporation called Finster. They're offered a home rent-free in exchange for keeping quiet about the seriously malfunctioning infrastructure of the experimental house. But when Louis returns home from his mother's funeral in America, Anja is convinced he has changed. He seems to be in denial of his grief and newly idealistic, consumed by a secret project at the NGO where he works as an artist-consultant. Anja is horrified when she discovers what Louis has invented: a pill called Oval that temporarily rewires the user's brain to be more generous. Louis is convinced that if he can introduce the drug into the Berlin club scene, he can finally remedy the income disparity that has made Berlin so unlivable. Oval is a fascinating portrait of the unbalanced relationships that shape our world, as well as a prescient warning of what the future may hold"--

Hannah Yang

This book blew (or read?) my mind. It's unlike anything else I've ever read, and feels like exactly what I have been needing/wanting to read. Oval is a cultural satire, articulating so many of the frustrating and/or intriguing unspoken dynamics in relationships that I have never been able to put into words myself and imagining a near-future where sustainability has been coopted by corporations and the upper/cultural class (where seemingly fantastical 'green' architecture and improvements in the name of eco-friendliness coexist with mass homelessness and wealth inequality).

The book's premise is the horror of Louis's new generosity-inducing pill, Oval, but most of the story is about the devolvement of Louis and Anja's relationship and the eco-house/biome/colony they live in, the Berg. Louis, Anja, and Howard are complex and fascinating characters -- each of them flawed, but startlingly realistic. Oval is a climax and tipping point in the story, accelerating their eventual breakup and Berlin's breakdown. Since Oval's (omni)presence in the story is evident so late, I can understand readers who might feel that the story moved too slowly, but I think this book has so much more to offer in the introspection x social commentary departments!

How do our relationships function -- what power dynamics, transactions, assumptions, equalities, and sacrifices do they depend upon? Do we have separate relationships with the relationships themselves from the people they are with? What does a truly sustainable future of humans coexisting with nature look like in reality, or have we lost the ability for such peaceful coexistence? We can't say no to sustainability -- but is there a right or wrong or best or worst way to pursue it? What does a world without weather in any consistent way look like -- how do patterns and cycles like weather dictate the way we socialize and operate? Do our motivations matter if the outcome is more generosity? What obligations do we have to each other? Greenwashing... planned obsolescence... gentrification... ethics of technology/pharmacology... transactions of social capital... gender dynamics.... all of these questions about the future are investigated in Oval. I think it paints a striking, troubling, and extremely plausible picture of the future (culturally, if not technologically), and for that reason is highly worth the read and consideration.

Daryl Houston

The subject seemed compelling, and with blurbs by Jeff VanderMeer and Tom McCarthy, the book seemed promising, but it was a disappointment. Wilk has some neat ideas, and she writes of things that reminded me of works by both VanderMeer and McCarthy that I admired, but ultimately, so much of the book was just dull recounting of dud relationships. It doesn't begin to be especially enjoyable until near the end, and then it stops.

Oval A Novel

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