Immaculate Conception (Ling Ling Huang) - 5 stars

[Flo]

This book is fucking insane!!!

I have so many thoughts about this book that I'm not even sure if I will be able to sum it all up in a simple review. This book touches on the intrusion of AI into art, what "good" art truly is, exploitation of others' ideas (and just of others), what makes an artist/genius, the run-away development of technology and the way that technology can be used to harm others, trauma and its connection to art, and how normal people can delude themselves into monstrous actions by justifying it as "love." So clearly, the author has taken a huge and ambitious leap in trying to elucidate all of these themes into one novel that is less than 300 pages—and tbh, I feel like she succeeded.

tl;dr this book follows Enka's development as an artist and her envy of her friend Mathilde who is heralded as an artistic genius and has achieved extreme levels of professional success. At the same time, Mathilde is dealing with trauma, which, through a series of events, leads to her and Enka having their minds connected with a technological device that allows Enka to delve into Mathilde's thoughts and memories freely under the guise of helping relieve some of that trauma and pain, but really to use Mathilde's memories as a way of generating more art in a way that Enka never felt like she could before. The cost of this procedure is steep, both in terms of Mathilde's health and Enka's relationships with others, including her husband, children, and Mathilde herself.

As the main character, Enka is a horrifying person who constantly talks about how much she loves Mathilde and thinks about how guilty she feels before turning around and making decisions that only hurt Mathilde (and others) more and more. As Mathilde shrinks more and more, Enka's fame as an artist grows, and as readers, we can only watch as Enka mines Mathilde's living corpse for more. By the time that she realizes that this isn't what she wants, it is too late. Another reviewer writes: "Her moments of clarity are brief, and her guilt lasts only as long as it takes for her to find a new angle of exploitation" which is much more eloquent than I could put it, but right on point.

The book also touches on and satirizes high art. The "art" that is reviewed positively in the novel is not really ~artistic and moreso relies on the obscene and sensational to get viewers. For example, one of Mathilde's pieces is where she tells priests in confessional booths inappropriate things graphically and then catches them masturbating, which is well-reviewed, but for readers, clearly not art. This is a such clever criticism of how we as a society have resorted to cheap thrillers and shocking audiences rather than trying to aim for deeper feelings and true connections with others, which art is supposed to facilitate, and it's woven throughout the novel.

This is also reinforced by the way that technological developments in this book end up dividing people rather than connecting them. All the technology in the book is generally used as a way to control people while being advertised as for the greater good in one way or another, which is very much a reflection of the world today (and in today's political environment in the US as well!!). The world at large in the novel is not fully explored, but from the glimpse we get, it is clearly very dystopian; people are physically separated into the haves and have-nots via technology that divides society as a whole. And of course, the device that ends up connecting Mathilde and Enka's brain ends up dividing their friendship and changing them irrevocably.

I feel like I could write a whole essay on this book (and I already have tbh) but that truly speaks to this author's genius and the way that she uses this book to criticize so many aspects of society, from AI to exploitation. I am obsessed with her and everything she does, and I eagerly look forward to her next book. If I had to indicate a flaw, I guess I would say that this book is super short (less than 300 pages) for something that takes place over 20 years, so there's a lot that isn't fully explored, like the worldbuilding which I mentioned earlier. At the same time though, this book is clearly meant more to be a satire of the art world and our society at large, and at that, the author thoroughly succeeds. I would recommend to book to anyone who wants to read a critique on our society or follow a very flawed character who you will both connect to and understand while hating and condemning her actions.