Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. They give me no money, nor do they in any way influence my thoughts – those are 100% my own for better or worse.
Edition: Kindle ebook
Synopsis (From Net Galley):
Meet Dillon: a high-functioning fuck-up and carer for his dying mum.
Trapped in an absurd cycle of pre-bereavement bereavement, he has been
hiding his pain and some horrible truths, not least from his girlfriend,
Ramona.
His distortions have been growing
dangerously more hardcore and hardwired, both online and off, thanks to
the self-reinforcing effects of social media and creepy digital
surveillance. And when a pair of snooping goons turn up, threatening to
expose him, he is forced to confront a gut-wrenching secret that he
would rather leave well alone.
This audacious novel
asks what happens when our minds are twisted beyond recognition by our
digital data and search histories, and when our darkest truths are
forced into the light by the uncanny predictive capabilities of our
smartphones.
What lengths would you go to in order to hide from yourself?
My Synopsis:
Dillon/Dylan/Dilhan, the tortured son of a terminally ill woman with whom he may or may not have a completely bizarre, borderline incestuous relationship with may or may not be on the receiving end of harassment by some weird old dudes because of some made up, possibly prophetic (but maybe just coded for nefarious reasons) news stories that his dad wrote many years ago. Or, it may just be all in his head. I mean, probably. Make sense? Yeah, I didn’t really think so either.
My Thoughts:
I didn’t dig on this book, like, at all. It took me a long time to read, and at no point did I find myself really getting into it. To me, it just felt like reading a super-British-dialected (forgive my ignorance of which dialect, specifically, but I am just not cultured enough to be able to place it other than to say generally British, but not, like, posh old school Bond-type British) version of a Chuck Palahniuk novel – but not like Choke, Invisible Monsters, or Fight Club – maybe Pygmy or one of the other newer ones that I read but couldn’t find myself getting into.
However, lest it sound like I completely hated this book, since that is far too dramatic, I will say this for it: it played to it’s name. Dillon’s fracturing of identity/reality is a constant theme in the story. There was definitely some clever storytelling techniques, and the plot felt original, if not particularly engrossing or followable.
The thing that I really struggled with, I think, is the whole digital intrusion bit. It felt like a side story rather than an important aspect of the overall story. Plus, the intrusion seemed to be embraced by Dillon/Dylan/Dilhan, so I’m not sure where the story is there.
This book currently has an average rating of just under 4 stars on Goodreads, so I think that the problem is not with the writing or the story, but with the audience (read: me). I think I am just not the target market for this story. I know very little about being a caregiver for a terminal loved one, and I am already wary about the amount of personal information that I throw into the digital world because I think it’s all a bit dodgy, so maybe I just missed the message Distortion was throwing out there.
Rating:
All those ratings are probably for a reason (or because they all supported the book on Unbound, and are therefore married to the final product. I don’t know. If you like fractured narratives, tech themes, and a bit of bizarro, maybe this one could be for you. But it definitely wasn’t for me. I like the story a hell of a lot in theory, but I felt like in practice it just fell flat.
Distortion Gautam Malkani Unbound General Fiction ISBN13: 9781783528479 Published: September 5, 2019
