Hum: The thrilling, feminist speculative novel

'Ingenious and unsettling' Observer 'This sleek ride of a novel further cements Phillips's position as one of our most profound writers of speculative fiction.' New York Times In a hot and gritty city populated by super-intelligent robots called 'Hums', May seeks some reprieve from recent hardships and from her family's addiction to their devices. She splurges on a weekend away at the Botanical Garden - a rare, green refuge in the heart of the city, where forests, streams and animals flourish. But when it becomes clear that the Garden is not the idyll she hoped it would be, and her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a Hum of uncertain motives in order to restore the life of her family. Gripping and unflinching, Hum is about our most cherished human relationships in a world compromised by climate change and dizzying technological revolution, a world with both dystopian and utopian possibilities.

About the Author :
Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including The Need, a National Book Award nominee and a New York Times Notable Book. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and the Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction. She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College.

Review :
Ingenious and unsettling 'This sleek ride of a novel further cements Phillips's position as one of our most profound writers of speculative fiction.' A speculative fable that grips... compassionate and chillingly plausible Gripping... thoughtful and graceful... mesmerising and scary While the growing clout of big tech makes it a boom time for dystopian writers eyeing our digital future, U.S. novelist Phillips stands out... A gripping portrait of dilemma-laden parenting in the face of internet-era anxiety. An urgent and sophisticated novel, and manages to be eerie without resorting to jump-scares... Add in online mobs, paranoia and the dystopia of small print and you have a genuinely stunning and chilling depiction of our world a semi-tone out or a year hence. What's more intoxicating than a Helen Phillips novel? Her books have blown open the doors of what's possible with the art of storytelling - and her latest, Hum, is her best work yet: one that captures, with fire and grace, our future and what it means to love, to persist, and to be human. This is a hold-your-breath book. Buckle up and get ready to deeply feel the joy - the thrill, the magic - of reading. An indelible family portrait and a narrative tour de force, Hum generates almost unbearable tension and unease from start to end. Stunning, strangely beautiful, and written from a place of deep compassion but also with a clear and analytical eye. Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future. I loved it. In Hum, Helen Phillips has written an eerie and electric novel that blurs the lines between dystopia and reality. What makes this especially creepy is how masterfully she taps the sense we feel in our own lives that what was once the stuff of sci-fi has seeped into the everyday. This chilling vision of a near future, one where its dwellers 'can't avoid the void,' resonates unnervingly with the way things already are. Readers won't be able to look away. A transcendent portrayal of artificial intelligence, love, the fate of families, and the emergence of synthetic beings beyond human imagination. Hum is something special. Helen Phillips is something really special. This novel is gripping and a true page-turner that made me think about our current world in completely new ways. Ultimately and most importantly, I closed the last page with a profound, deep love for the simple, beautiful and very human lives we lead. Hum is a prescient, unnerving and excellent novel of a future that seems frighteningly possible. It's the story, in part, of a mother just trying to make her family happy and how the world punishes her for it. Helen Phillips writes with sharp insight and sly humor, making her critique of our current moment feel timely and timeless. There's a lot going on in this novel, but trust Helen Phillips to navigate it effortlessly.... It's Anxiety Central, but in a good way. An extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers A chilling novel from a blazing talent