Hum

By: Helen Phillips

Narrated by: Ariel Blake

Named Most Anticipated by Goodreads, LitHub, and Book Riot, this “tense dystopian thriller” (TIME) captures an urgent and unflinching portrayal of a woman’s fight for her family’s security in a world shaped by global warming and rapid technological progress.

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”

©2024 Helen Phillips (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

It’s like Black Mirror in Book format

It was performed well, though at times I found myself wondering if I would dislike the characters less if their voices were portrayed differently by the narrator.

I found the title character to make a shocking amount of stupid decisions for somebody who’s supposedly smart enough to code AI so well that she ends up putting herself out of a job. Often I thought to myself “this problem seems like it could be explained away enough with a bit of transparency toward the authorities” who are the unseen antagonists of the story.

Her children struck me as being spoiled brats, but perhaps that was the point. There are so many instances of them saying bratty things and behaving disrespectfully that evoke a non-response from their parents that I wondered what the point of writing them that way was. I could see why the author would do it if it eventually led the protagonist to snap, but it doesn’t.

The one thing that bothered me most about this story was the odd bit of telling commentary from the eponymous Hums which seems to suggest that they know their own role in turning the world into such a dystopian place. It’s never explained what spurns on those comments or how/why the Hums talk like that. I wish the author had gone somewhere with that.

Hopelessly Sad

The book had its thought-provoking moments, but there were no truly bright experiences, no levity. The relationship between the main character and her spouse made so sense and displayed neither consistency nor development. I think I was expected to like the kids. I didn’t. Overall, I felt quiet desperation—somewhat on behalf of the characters and somewhat for the story to end.

Bleh

I kept wanting this to build into something great. It never did. It fell so short that at the end it was so unsatisfying and then felt like such a waste

Disappointing

I was so looking forward to this book. I pre-ordered it and avidly awaited its arrival in my library.
As it turned out, the book was thoroughly disappointing. It was more a prolix short story than a novel.

Why Literary "Speculative Fiction" Doesn't Work

I've come to some conclusions about those who write "literary speculative fiction."
1. Perish the thought that they write "science fiction."
2. If everybody under the sun can't wait for the book to come out, avoid it.
3. There must be annoying children in the novel, which, if you don't have any, convince you never to have any of your own.
4. It's an excuse to not follow the standards of most genres: world building, character development, having a plot...
5. It's a reason to be vague and ambiguous (though the only thing I liked about this book was the last hour and the totally ambiguous ending--sometimes it works, but I suspect it will frustrate most people.
6. It's about the idea, which may or may not be clear, not the execution. This book had too many ideas, some more successfully executed than others.
7. Most writers can't pull it off. This is a good example.

The worse of the worse

I don’t know what anyone was thinking when recording this novel, it is a work of junk fiction. It is worthwhile of trash.