Victoria Hetherington

As 2037 Canada is ravaged by illness, one woman and her AI companion enter a dangerous bubble of the superrich.Montreal, 2035: a fledging synthetic consciousness "wakes up" in a lab. Jenny, the lead developer, determined to nurture this synthetic being like a child, trains it for work with people at the border of the Canadian Protectorate. She names it Julian.Toronto, 2037: Canada has been annexed by a tightly conservative United States. Slaton, a therapist at a university, is framed by a student for arranging an illegal abortion. She follows the student to America and is detained at the border. In virtual space she meets Julian, and he becomes her constant companion. Meanwhile, a mysterious plague spreads across the world. Only the far seeing and well-connected Julian can protect Slaton from the impending societal collapse.Reminiscent of Don DeLillo's contemplative hyperrealities and Margaret Atwood's frightening future worlds, Autonomyis an ambitious philosophical novel about the possibilities for love in a world in which human bodies are either threatened or irrelevant.

Autonomy

Christina Pappas

Overall, I enjoyed and appreciated this book. In some ways, it reminded me of The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel, which you could also describe as focused on a woman's brief, fascinating, and ultimately untenable foray into the "country of money" and all of the protections (and hypocrisies) that come with it. 

Given that, I feel the blurb wasn't a great representation, so it took me a while to start to feel oriented - I struggled to follow along with what was happening or to feel really invested in the book for the first third or so. 

There was some really gorgeous writing; there were a few phrases and sentences that really struck me (I loved "wine wicked away my guilt at overshooting survival all the way up to this strange, stratospheric new world" and "some women see a gilded cage and think, it's still a cage; some women see a gilded cage and think, it's still gilded"). 

However, it took me much longer than usual to finish this book, both because of the mismatch between my expectations and what it was actually about and because its topic and content just hits SO close to home right now. I know the author wrote this a while ago, but it almost felt like doomscrolling the news at times (which is far more a commentary on our current state of affairs than anything she could have done differently). 

This was 3.5 stars for me, rounded to 4. Thanks to Dundurn Press and Rare Machines for my ARC.

Autonomy

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