I read this book in one day because I found it so compelling and well-written. I thought it was all so clever. I loved the different vignettes that all tied together. This somewhat "dystopian" future is not so very different from our present and the author captures our expectations for a quick fix from technology and the realities that an app or a list or a diet, etc. won't fix our problems. It was sweet and funny and poignant. I look forward to reading more by her.

3.5

Really interesting characters + plot, but the ending felt unfinished

I enjoyed this thoughtful, provocative novel. It’s set in a near future, and the world is almost the same, with a few technical innovations. The book is about one particular gadget that’s come along: the Apricity, a machine that tells you exactly what you need to make you happy.

The Apricity gets its information from a little DNA, and after that, it’s weirdly specific. It might tell you to eat tangerines, learn a particular foreign language, smile more at your wife, or amputate the end of your finger. And it’s right, even when it seems like a crazy thing to do. If you do these things, you’ll be happier. The specs of the Apricity are a closely guarded secret, and Pearl works for the company that makes it. She administers it wherever it’s needed, mostly in office environments where morale is down.

Sometimes the book feels like a collection of linked short stories, rather than a novel. This doesn’t detract from it, however, because all the vignettes are interesting and deepen our understanding of the characters.

Besides Pearl, there’s her teenage son, Rhett, and his girlfriend Saff. Rhett tries to help Saff figure out which of her friends shattered her privacy with an online video. This leads to an exploration of her group and their experiment with scapegoating.

Pearl, meanwhile, deals with Rhett’s anorexia. He won’t take an Apricity test, but she gives him a surreptitious one anyway, and then has to deal with the vaguely threatening results. She handles this by getting a household pet: a large lizard with a voracious appetite, a creature that always needs to be fed.

And there’s Calla, a pop star. Her fame comes from her ability to scream, and she’s starred in many frightening movies, which capitalize on her genuine fear of many things. Then there’s Carter, who works with Pearl, and tries to use the Apricity for a different purpose, for power rather than happiness.

There’s Elliott, Pearl’s genial ex-husband, and his new wife, Val. Val is hiding a secret past in which she’s been blamed for something she didn’t do, but she can’t tell anyone. Some of the best writing comes here, in Val’s story, but all the writing is good.

The social criticism in this novel is pointed but wry - forgiving, affectionate, tongue-in-cheek. We humans do zany things, and we mostly have no idea why, and the book somehow gives them an internal logic. It explores some of the interactions between humans, and between humans and the artificial world we’ve created, and it gives us a few hints about the ways in which it all fits together. But no pat solutions are given, and nothing wraps up in an overly neat way. It’s too modern a book for that.

This is the story of a cool but slightly creepy near future technology that, in exchange for a lot of money, will give you recommendations of three things you can do that will make you happy - anything from eating ice cream to leaving your spouse or voluntary amputation. But it’s also so much more. It’s about happiness: what we would do for it, why we think we do or don’t deserve it; how our happiness can be another person’s misery and our misery can mean happiness for another person, or dozens or thousands or millions of people; how our happiness changes or doesn’t change with time, with tiny modifications to our lives, with enormous challenges. It’s about how we define who we are, to ourselves and to others, and how we present ourselves to ourselves and to the world, and how others see us, both literally and metaphorically. It’s about art – do you need misery to create it? If you’re happy, do you have to pervert your happiness to be an artist? Will the art be any good? It’s about technology and how we choose or don’t choose to use it, and the reality of our bodies and beings, and what we can and can’t choose and change and do about them.

I loved the writing, I loved the characters, and I loved the delicate, hidden complexity. Every time I think about it, I realize that every character and subplot has echoes elsewhere. Yet Williams has written so deftly that none of this is obvious - the pieces lie waiting for you to put them together, like the strange, delicate models that the protagonist loves. This is a beautifully presented story.

"Tell The Machine Goodnight" by Katie Williams was an excellent speculative fiction book. At the center of the book is a machine that tests your DNA and tells you what you need to do to be happy. The book runs with that idea. It reminded me of the movie "HER" mixed with an episode of Black Mirror. The story is a fragmented narrative from various character perspectives that paints a vivid picture of a future society. While this society has new tools to aid in its pursuit of happiness, they are just as clueless as we are now. I loved the interesting characters and intriguing stories. To say any more would be to spoil the fun. This is a delightful, inciteful book that will make you think.

I loved this. It's one of the most fascinating things I've read in recent memory. The premise: a not-so-distant future where science can swab your cheek and then tell you exactly what you need to do to be happy. Maybe it's simple and kind of obvious - "get a puppy." Maybe it sounds outright bizarre and counter-intuitive - "cut off the first joint of your right index finger." Whatever it is, if you just follow the machine's advice, your happiness will increase.

Some people are desperate to receive their advice. Some refuse. Some are relieved to hear it. Some become enraged (but only initially). Does it really work? Is it all in the human mind? I think the author is leaning one particular way, but following those crumbs is the whole fun of this book. I won't go into spoiling detail.

At first, I wondered if I'd accidentally picked up a book of short stories, all written about the same characters in the same world, but each attacking the question from a different angle. The first several chapters were so complete unto themselves, I'd easily have accepted any one as a stand-alone story. Further along, all the stories weave into each other and the broader picture becomes more evident. I love both aspects of the telling.

The characters were lovely. They all wanted something so badly, you could feel it. You wanted with them, and rejoiced or sighed at their successes or lack thereof. Everything they wanted was so perfectly human, it occasionally left a little ache. The resolutions, such as they were, satisfied without being saccharine.

Excellent read for those who enjoy speculative fiction and near-futures.

i would give 5 stars but I'm still figuring out if i like the ending

i don't know why this book was on my list. the first chapter, it didn't seem like my type book at all.
but then i really enjoyed it. the type book i felt could be studied and written about.
the chapters were a little weird. sometimes first person sections and you had to figure out who was talking. lots about art and the book was artistic itself.
the machine would tell you things you could do to be happier. a mom, a son, the ex husb, the new wife, the sons friends, the clients, a movie star.
I think I wanted more answers. I think I wanted to see how all of them came together more. I think I wanted to know more about the asterisk.
but this is the type book where I feel you're supposed to learn more about you and to think

I enjoyed this rumination on technology's impact on our happiness and our obsession with quick fixes for our mental well-being. It felt like an expanded, hopeful episode of Black Mirror.

I liked that the story uses the characters more so than the sci fi tech to explore these themes; while the tech is definitely important to the story, its used more as world building and setting than as a plot device, with all of the page-turnability relying on the complex and fully realized characters.

There are multiple points of view, and some worked better than others -- particularly, any that the author wrote in the first person.; some of the third person POVs paled in comparison.

I feel like it ended somewhat abruptly, and Im not entirely sure what the final message was or what conclusion I was supposed to arrive at. Some of the disparate story lines didnt fully come together for me in the end. It kind of felt more like a philosophical exercise at times than a novel, but I could also just have been missing the point or expecting more plot mechanics.

Overall enjoyed it, but not one of my top sci fi recs.