The resisters : a novel / by Gish Jen.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2020Copyright date: ©2020Edition: First editionDescription: 301 pages ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780525657217
- 0525657215
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Dr. James Carlson Library | Fiction | Jen, Gish | Available | 33111009423837 | ||||
Adult Book | Main Library | Fiction | Jen, Gish | Available | 33111009592862 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
"A dystopia so chillingly plausible that an entire review could be spent simply describing its components.... Marvelous." --The Boston Globe
The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica, a country surveilled by one "Aunt Nettie," a Big Brother that is part artificial intelligence, part internet, and oddly human--even funny. The people: divided. The "angelfair" Netted have jobs and, what with the country half under water, literally occupy the high ground. The Surplus live on swampland if they're lucky, on water if they're not.
The story: To a Surplus couple--he once a professor, she still a lawyer--is born a girl, Gwen, with a golden arm. Her teens find her happily playing in an underground baseball league, but when AutoAmerica faces ChinRussia in the Olympics, Gwen finds herself in dangerous territory, playing ball with the Netted even as her mother battles this apartheid-like society in court.
The Resisters is the provocative, moving, and paradoxically buoyant story of one family struggling to maintain their humanity in circumstances that threaten their every value.
"This Is A Borzoi Book" -- Title page verso.
An audacious wonder of a novel about baseball and a future America,. The time: Some thirty-five years hence. The place: AutoAmerica--governed by "Aunt Nettie," an iBurrito of AI algorithms and the internet, in a land half under water. The people: Divided into the angelfair "Netted," whose fate it is to have jobs and live on high ground, and the mostly coppertoned "Surplus," whose jobs have been stripped and whose sole duty now is to consume, living in plastic houses that talk and multi-colored houseboats at the water's edge. Neither group is happy. The story: A Surplus family--he was once a professor, she is still a lawyer--has a girl child, Gwen, who's born with a golden arm. By two she can throw her toy animals straight to the same spot every time. When AutoAmerica and ChinRussia decide to revive the Olympics, suddenly Gwen, who's been playing in the Resisters League her parents have organized, is in great demand. Soon she's at angelfair university, Net U, falling in love with her baseball coach and facing questions of "crossing over," while her mother and her "group" are bringing charges before the botjudge about Surplus rights. An amazing story of a world that looks only too possible, and a family struggling to maintain its humanity in circumstances that daily threaten their every value as well as their very existence.