There is a scene before the plot really kicks into action, in this novel set in an information-saturated not-too-distant future where one character, seemingly shallow beyond description, toasts the pregnancy of his friends:
“I think they are the only people who should be giving birth, the only peeps qualified to pop one out.”
“Right on!” we call-and-responded.
“The only peeps sure of themselves enough so that, come what may, the child will be loved and cared for and sheltered. Because they’re good people. I know folks say that a lot – ‘They’re good peeps, yo’ – but there’s the kind of plastic good, the kind of easy ‘good’ any of us can generate, and then there’s this other, deep thing that is so hard for us to find anymore. Consistency. Day-to-day. Moving on. Taking stock. Never exploding. Channeling it all, that anger, that huge anger about what’s happened to us as a people, channeling it into whatever-the-fuck. Keeping it away from children, that’s all I’m going to say.”
It is a novel about how we know that we don’t know what we’ve lost. Or maybe lost isn’t the right term because we know our memory of what we had isn’t reliable so it is about how we know that we don’t know what is missing.
Your Correspondent, Has escaped the anxiety of theological influence by never stepping foot inside a church