Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Thomas Sweterlitsch (2014)
A great idea made tedious
Book cover blurb
It is ten years since the attack that reduced Pittsburgh to ashes. Today all that remains is the Archive: an interactive digital record of the city and its people.
John Dominic Blaxton is a survivor, one of the 'lucky ones' who escaped the blast. Crippled by the loss of his wife and unborn daughter, he spends his days immersed in the Archive with the ghosts of yesterday.
It is there he finds the digital record of a body: a woman, lying face down, half buried in mud. Who is she...and why is someone hacking into the system and deleting the record of her seemingly unremarkable life? This question will drag Dominic from the darkest corners of the past into a deadly and very present nightmare.
My Review
A great idea drowned in waffle.
I had to hit the DNF button at page 123, I couldn't even force myself to get my customary halfway point in the book before making the decision to put it down.
It's a real shame too because I loved the main idea behind this story. The devastated city of Pittsburgh, the investigations to verify deaths for insurance purposes and the method of it being done via interactive virtual reality. All that coupled with the plot points of a drug addict mourning the loss of his wife and unborn child lost in the events that wiped out Pittsburg ten years ago, his ability as a VR investigator, him being hired to investigate the existence of a woman who seems to be being erased from the devastated city's records. This is all great stuff, unfortunately, all those plot points could probably be covered in a few dozen pages. The rest of the text appears to me to be the author revelling in and simply showing off the world he's created.
The fundamental message from every novelist I've ever heard offering advice is always "drive the story forward." Sweterlitsch spends most of the time standing still and boring the reader with repeated world-building detail, usually involving virtual advertising or porn. A real shame.
I hope his book, 'The Gone World' is better because I bought that one at the same time.
My copy of this novel
Headline paperback edition.
Published in 2014
352 pages
ISBN 9781472214874