Review by Booklist Review
Dhaka-born, Harvard PhD-ed, London--domiciled Anam has won prestigious accolades for her Bengal trilogy into which she's lyrically woven Bangladeshi history with personal inspiration. She turns utterly contemporary in her newest novel, which reads rather like an elevated, fictional version of Anna Weiner's Uncanny Valley (2020). Asha has loved Cyrus since ninth grade; he disappeared without graduating. Four years into her MIT PhD, Asha reunites with Cyrus at their high-school English teacher's memorial service and they marry two months later. Together with Cyrus' best friend, Jules, the trio found WAI (pronounced "why"), as in We Are Infinite, a social-media platform that connects strangers "on the basis of what gives their life meaning." Asha is the engineering genius, Jules the cheerleading big thinker. Cyrus, initially reluctant, disdainful of capitalism, calling technology grotesque, will--surprise!--become the public essence of WAI. Amalgamating love, work, and identities without boundaries will not end well. Infused with winks to Han Kang's The Vegetarian (2016) and the Otsuchi wind phone, Anam's not-quite-love-story shrewdly exposes gender inequity, racism, homophobia, and male white privilege, achieving sharply exposing, skillfully engaging results.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Heavy lies the high-tech crown in Anam's spectacular fourth novel (after her Bengal trilogy). Asha Ray, 30, a brilliant computer coder whose PhD project at Harvard involves the "reverse engineering of the brain," reconnects with Cyrus Jones, a high school crush she hasn't seen in 13 years who has become an itinerant "humanist spirit guide," officiating weddings and baptisms for nonreligious people. She abandons her research and the two marry in an impulsive city hall wedding, then move into her parents' house on Long Island. Asha and Cyrus find work at Utopia, a tech company whose mission is to "save humanity from the apocalypse." There, Asha throws herself into creating an "Empathy Module" algorithm for a social networking app inspired by Cyrus's spiritual work. The app, a "virtual parish" called WAI (We Are Infinite) becomes a global sensation, and, after Cyrus gets the credit for it, his charismatic personality turns him into a "new messiah" and threatens their marriage. A startling ending framed by a deadly, Covid-like pandemic drives the plot close to a disastrous abyss as a trend of "death ritual groups" sparked by the app causes moral and ethical dilemmas. Anam provides a piercing perspective on marital and business institutions and gender bias and cultural clashes, and weaves in rich local color as Asha grows reacquainted with her childhood home and her parents' Muslim community. This is a powerful statement on the consequences of public achievement on private happiness. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Canongate. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
After completing her ambitious "Bengal Trilogy" (A Golden Age; The Good Muslim; The Bones of Grace), Aman presents audiences with lighter fare. As the novel opens, readers meet twentysomething Bangledeshi American Asha, who is caught up in a whirlwind romance with her high school crush Cyrus Jones. They marry after a two-month relationship. Then, along with Cyrus's best friend Julian (aka Jules), they lay the groundwork for a company that is accepted into Utopia, an organization that works with a select community of startups. Asha leaves her PhD program, and she and Cyrus move into her parents' basement as they focus on successfully launching their company. Asha's voice carries the novel; readers will follow eagerly as she grapples with her and Jules's decision to have Cyrus serve as the face of the company while she works nonstop behind the scenes to create and sell it. VERDICT Drawing on aspects of the author's life, this tech-oriented novel offers readers a glimpse of the challenges of creating and running a startup. Anam brings the issue of gender equality in work and relationships to the forefront of the narrative. With a mention of the current pandemic woven into the story, Anam's modern tale has plenty of talking points that will make it a good selection for book groups.--Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A brilliant coder marries her high school crush and creates an app that accidentally turns him into the millennial messiah. After high school, Asha Ray blossomed. "I stepped into my brain like I was putting on a really great pair of sneakers for the first time....I cut my hair very short and got the first six digits of Pi tattooed on my left shoulder." She's working at a high-powered Cambridge AI lab when she attends the funeral of a high school teacher back on Long Island. There, she runs into the beautiful, long-lost Cyrus, who now creates alternative rituals based on all the spiritual traditions of the Earth. Two months later they are married, and she's left her lab to found a startup with her new husband and his wealthy best friend, Jules. WAI (We Are Infinite), the app Asha writes, leverages Cyrus' alternative-ritual concept into a social media platform. Though the lawyers they consult about incorporation suggest that the couple get a postnup, two years later Asha remains on cloud nine. "I'm going to write a marriage guide," she thinks. "I'll call it The Startup Wife: How To Succeed in Business and Marriage at the Same Time." But as WAI scales the heights of venture capital and turns into an international obsession--users have shared 800,000 cat baptisms alone--with Cyrus as its face, any good feminist might predict a darker outcome for this story. Anam's fourth novel is very good on all the tech and millennial accoutrements, with imaginary apps for everything from consensual sex to anal hygiene and no scene complete without a glass of raspberry shrub or rosemary water. Nits: The outcome is overly signaled; feminism plays an odd role somewhere between liberation ideology and buzzkill; the front end of the pandemic crashing into the back end of the book seems unnecessary. A clever, often funny anti-romance novel set in the world of platforms, launches, engagements, and turmeric lattes. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
