LONELINESS & COMPANY

Dyroff debuts with an inventive dystopian novel set in a near future where human interactions are automated and America's center of gravity has shifted from the coasts to the middle of the country. Lee, 27, graduates at the top of her class in a Minneapolis-based career placement program, expecting to land a job with one of the nation's leading tech companies headquartered in the Midwest. Instead, her dreams are quashed and she's sent to run-down New York City, where the historic financial district is now underwater, to work for an unknown outfit secretly programming a virtual friend named Vicky. There, Lee keeps to herself and doesn't even bother to learn her co-workers' names. Eventually, the company's leaders explain their real goal: to address the problem of loneliness, an emotion supposedly removed from the Emotional Index several decades earlier but still plaguing people. When Lee realizes she's more successful in training Vicky based on her own firsthand observations of human interactions than on researching what friendship used to be like, she tries to overcome her own sense of isolation by going on dates. The novel's view of the future is particularly distinct in its depictions of dating life; there's only one app, called Dating, and it requires users to select from predictive text when filling out their profiles. Dyroff also nails the ways in which single-minded ambition can obscure opportunities for connection. This brims with clear insight and unsettling visions of the world to come. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (May)