Narrative drive is a mysterious thing. Fiction with narrative drive is supposed to be all about cliff-hanger plots that reveal, in a step-by-step fashion, the set-up for a gristly murder, saving the crucial piece of information -- the identity of the killer -- for the final page. The function of this kind of storytelling is supposed to be merely to provide a few hours of vacuous escape. The rest of us are supposed to be reading primarily to enjoy the resplendent sentence structure of the literar More...

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Scott Hutchins' debut novel starts out with elements of the absurd but he tells it without blinking, with such a steady tone and an even hand that (eventually) drew me in. Neill Bassett is a thirty-something divorced man living in San Francisco who could best be described as listless and probably a little depressed. His job is to help develop a natural sounding language software to allow a semi-sentient computer to converse with humans, using the extensive More...

I liked this book, but I didn't love it.

I think that has a lot to do with the main character's apathy. That being said, I did love the evolving computer, the way Neill perceived his co-workers, and how those perceptions changed, and the flashbacks to his childhood.

I wasn't as crazy about his jumbled love life, or the tangents he used to go on with his ex-wife.

It seems that this novel attempted to connect present love life with former family life, and while all the of the pieces were there, the c More...

I tried, oh Lord did I try. I got to page 111, but then the self-absorption and passivity of the narrator became too much for me. At times the narrative drew me in, when Neill was talking about the past: his relationship with his father, his honeymoon, but Neill in the present destroyed it.

Sometimes I think it's me. This tends to happen when I read books that I'm told are deep and intimate portraits of humanity. I just want to smack the main character over the head. And, wow, did I want to smac More...

Neill has carefully arranged his small post-divorce life to be completely unexceptional. It appears that his set routine, unremarkable apartment, and the job he isn’t particularly passionate about will mark his time through life. But when he becomes involved with a free-spirited younger woman and his work on a family project come to a head at the same time, he is forced to consider that his life may not be very settled after all. The crux of the story is that Neill is paid to run simulations wit More...

Neill Bassett talks to his father every day. The only problem is that Neill’s father (drbas – computer speak for Dr. Bassett) is dead. He committed suicide and all that Neill is left with are his father’s mostly mundane journals written on yellow legal pads. By a twist of fate, Neill ends up working for Amiante Systems, an artificial intelligence company in San Francisco determined to create the first successful ‘intelligent’ computer and Neill’s father’s journals become the data. It’s a clever More...

I don't read a lot of fiction set in the Bay Area. So I was struck by the descriptions of the Mission and the people hanging out at Dolores Park. Or the feeling of driving through Menlo Park. Or the way the light feels at the end of the day. Clearly Scott Hutchins benefitted from his time at Stanford. Hutchins' ability to convey the emotions and atmosphere of a place ground this story very specifically in this time and place. As a result, they give the protagonist of this novel a framework, as h More...

I found this to be a unique reading experience. I vascillated between thinking, "this is fantastic" to "I don't know if I can finish this book." What I found is that I really liked certain themes and threads, and really disliked others. I loved the conversations between Neill and the computer, and loved the family themes, particularly the main theme about coming to terms with the suicide of a loved one. I thought the relationship between Neill and his mother was the most interesting aspect of th More...

What an original story! It’s a romance, but my techie-scifi husband is even saying it’s on his list to read. It should definitely appeal to men and women equally. The main character is a man in his thirties, floundering in many ways after his divorce and his father’s suicide. He’s got daddy issues (join the club!), and he ends up working on them not with a shrink, but with the incarnation of his dead father in an artificially intelligent computer that has all his dad’s diaries inputted. It’s a w More...

I won this book in Goodreads First Reads Program, but that in itself in now way prejudices my opinion of it.

In this book I suspected something quite... well I suppose the best word that comes to mind is dry. However, I was pleasantly surprised. "A Working Theory of Love" blends Romance (with a capital r), mid-life crisis and just a hint of sci-fi. Truly an unexpected combination and an even better follow through. I would recommend this for light readers, and also those looking for something deep More...

Copy/paste from my blog, http://orlandoutland.wordpress.com, where I'm chronicling the development of my own book about AI, "Less Than a Person and More than a Dog."

So I finished Scott Hutchins’ “A Working Theory of Love,” the book that had me panicked into thinking that it was too late for “Less Than” and Alex. And I’m relieved, as I no longer feel beat to the punch. Its AI and more importantly that AI’s place in the world, is a prequel of sorts to Alex, I’d say, but it’s definitely not the sam More...

Relationships can be complicated. Neill Bassett knows this well. His marriage imploded nearly as soon as it started, despite the fact he and his wife dated for a long time before getting married. And his relationship with his father, a strict, traditionally Southern doctor, was definitely fractious until his father committed suicide while Neill was in college.

Yet Neill's father isn't quite out of his life. When he died, he left behind thousands of pages of journals chronicling daily occurrences, More...

The New Yorker had cited this novel in a short list of notable books released this month. I liked the sound of the plot, and liked even more the praise it was given by the reviewers. I downloaded the first couple pages and was intrigued. The writing style was snappy, detailed, and hinted at bigger things.

In short, the novel's plot follows a young man who is working on an artificial intelligence program based on his deceased father's copious journals. (So, in a sense, the AI program has his fath More...

Neill Bassett Jr has a very unusual job. His employer is trying to beat the Turing Test by building a computer program that can exhibit intelligent behavior. The aim is to convince one third of a panel of judges chatting with it online that it is a human and not a computer program.

Neill, however, is not a computer programmer, or even a linguist. He is the son of the doctor who kept the twenty-year diary that has been used to build the foundation of the computer program. Neill’s job is to chat w More...

This book comes out in October, but I got to read a copy early because of the Penguin First Flights program.

I found it impossible to read this book without thinking of Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart*. It isn't exactly the same setting, but the main character and his much younger lover felt like they had been picked up and dropped into this book, with a few little tweaks. It was the most bizarre sense of déjà vu I've had as a reader. I get a little tired of middle aged male protagon More...

Firstreads giveaway: Great first novel, at times insightful. Narrator was a little too passive for my tastes, but he became more likable near the end of the novel - could be because he finally "clicked" with the world and his surroundings. Also, I actually wanted to give this 3.5 stars, but Goodreads doesn't allow half stars...

for a more thorough review

Pretty solid story from cover to cover. I could see where Hutchins was coming from, in terms of self discovery, self loathing, living up to the expectations of family, etc. I felt that at times Hutchins was little too self loathing, but in this day and age, a 36 year old, divorced, and having a father who committed suicide, a little self doubt and loathing will creep up, but Hutchins took it a little too far. I really didn't know if I liked Neill or not. I liked Rachel. I liked Livorno. I liked More...

It's an interesting premise: A dead man's copious journals are scanned into a computer in an attempt to recreate his personality through an artificial intelligence program capable of passing the Turing Test. The deceased man's son becomes part of the AI project, and as the program evolves, the son and his computerized "father" interact in increasingly complex and surprising ways. Add to this the son's several love interests, plus some West Coast New Age cult stuff, and you end up with an OK nove More...

I took a gamble on this book, and unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the book very much at all. Its premise certainly sounded promising - a thirty-something divorced man joined a computer company, with the extensive journals of his deceased father in hand, in their goal in creating the first A.I. system to pass the Turing test. The manner of Neill’s father’s death further complicated matters for Neill and drove most of the plot along as Neill reconciled himself with the actions of his father. But thi More...

I wanted to like this novel, I really did. The charming front cover and the synopsis on the inside of it sounded promising, and it was the book I was most excited to read from the pile I checked out of the library.
Unfortunately, the book was mediocre, at best. The book moved incredibly slowly, with a plot that I was absolutely sure was non-existent by the time that I was halfway through it. Character development was even more awful. The main character, Neill, felt to me as though he was a shell More...

Neill's father, Dr. Basset, kept fastidious journals before he committed suicide. And when Amiante Systems uses these journals to create an intelligent computer, they hire Neill to humanize the computer. Daily conversations with his computer-father send Neill's life into turmoil. And when the computer starts to think rather than just relay information, Neill is faced with a bit of an existential crisis. Did he ever really love his father? Could he have prevented his suicide?

While all this crazin More...

In my reading this year, I've sought to replicate the experience of "Ready Player One" -- by far my favorite novel of 2011. I'm usually looking for the right combination of human and tech elements.

This book features a 30-something divorcee who struggles with relationships -- new and old. The most poignant relationship is with his Father, who committed suicide without explanation when the central character was a young adult.

The relationship with his Father is explored through an interesting angle More...

Is seeming the same as being?

Neill Bassett, Jr. is working for a small company with big ideas: Creating a computer that can pass the Turing Test. Neill isn't a programmer though, he's the son of the diarist the company is basing their computer on. As he works to mould the computer to be more human, Neill starts questioning just how much of his dead father is in the computer Dr. Bassett.

The title was interesting and, as Paul's formula for books goes, this was bound to be a depressing book. But More...

I received an advance of this book as the August selection in the Penguin Debut Authors Program. It is interesting to me that I have recently read several books that dealt with "humanlike" computers. Neill is pulled into a contest between computer giants when his dead father's journals are used to build a working model of a more "human" computer program. The idea being that it is either possible or impossible to develop a program that reacts as a person would, not as a machine. The problem is tw More...

Grade: A-

L/C Ratio: 80/20
(This means I estimate the author devoted 80% of his effort to creating a literary work of art and 20% of his effort to creating a commercial bestseller.)

Thematic Breakdown:
35% - Love
25% - Artificial intelligence
20% - Family
10% - San Francisco
10% - Divorce


The emphasis on computer science in the plot of Scott Hutchins's debut novel will probably scare some readers away, afraid that the book is geeky sci-fi masquerading as literary fiction. And that's a shame, because A Wo More...

As a disclaimer, I received this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads program.

It's inevitable that I will compare any book set in San Francisco to Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series. Is this entirely fair? No, absolutely not. So with that said, I'll get this out of the way now - this book is nothing like Tales of the City, and I'm perfectly okay with that. But like Maupin, Hutchins obviously loves San Francisco, and the city (and the surrounding areas) become almost as big a charac More...

This book absolutely won me over. Perhaps it was the right book for the right time for me, or some sort of silliness like that, but every bit of it completely resonated with me.

I will be the first to admit that I am a total sucker for a book set in San Francisco. For those of you who have read more than a few of my reviews, you know how I love to rail against every book set in New York, and I guess this hometown favoritism is no different, but to me, it just is so good to have someone write abo More...

This is a really brilliant book. Think Jonathan Tropper and Jess Walter, but smarter. Neill is newly divorced and works as a software developer creating a computer with feelings. The catch is they’re using his dead father’s thousands of journal pages to create this program. (Cue conversations with computer he could not have with his dad). There is a very computing/engineer side to this (which I loved, working in the industry, though it does get a tad tedious at times) yet a ton of heart. This bo More...

Neill has been chatting with his father. They talk about the old days, when Neill was a boy growing up in the south. They talk about Neill's mom and brother, about the neighbour down the road, and about his dad's medical practice.

The only catch is, Neill's dad killed himself in 1995, when Neill was still in college, before Neill was married and divorced, before he moved to California, before he took up permanent bachelorhood. Neill's dad now resides inside of a computer, an attempt at creating A More...

The premise holds a lot of promise. This book did not initially grab me but grew on me slowly as the AI evolved. The main character was not someone I would want to spend time with in real life. Actually, I wouldn't want to be friends with ANY of the characters. There was profound loneliness throughout. After the suicide of his physician father, Neill Bassett, Jr. fell into the job of working towards the goal of creating a computer with a consciousness, using his father's journals as a basis. Eve More...