November 18, 2019
A prodigious young athlete fights the oppression and poverty of her social class in this shrewd and provocative near-future novel from Jen (World and Town). In AutoAmerica, the Netted rule over an underclass called the Surplus, who receive Basic Income but aren’t allowed to work and are denied basic human rights. Seventeen-year-old Gwen, a member of the Surplus and a star player in the Underground Baseball League, is tired of her oppressive life and wants to rise to the Netted class. She gets her chance when the Netted recruit her to help beat ChinRussia. Gwen faces a crisis of conscience as she looks back on those she would leave behind, including her friend Ondi, once banished for a month for sharing forbidden content on the internet, and her father, Grant (also the narrator), who intersperses anecdotes of brutal punishments faced by fellow members of their rank throughout. By placing the narration in Grant’s measured, ironic voice, Jen shows how the Netted accomplished their subtle, Huxleyian takeover through bigotry and technology. While some of Jen’s fans might miss the overt humor of her previous work, her intelligence and control shine through in a chilling portrait of the casual acceptance of totalitarianism.

Starred review from December 1, 2019
Subtle dystopian fiction from the author of World and Town. It's the not-too-distant future, and the United States has become AutoAmerica. The citizenry has been divided into the Netted and the Surplus. The job of the former is to rule, while the primary function of the latter is to consume. These are new social classes, but, as Grant, the narrator, notes, they look a lot like the old social classes. The Netted are "angelfair." Grant is "coppertoned," and his services as a professor are no longer needed. Eleanor, his "spy-eyed" wife, is still practicing law, though, mostly fighting on behalf of the oppressed; when the novel begins, she has just been released from prison. What's most remarkable about the worldbuilding here is that the sense of horror that suffuses so much dystopian fiction is absent. Grant's tone is wryly matter-of-fact--perhaps because, as a dark-skinned person, he never took the freedoms and opportunities he once had for granted. And, really, the totalitarian country he describes is entirely believable. It's not the product of a single cataclysmic event. It is, instead, the result of a million seemingly inconsequential actions, the cumulative effect of citizens giving away little pieces of their agency every time they choose convenience over autonomy. But life changes for Grant's family when the government decides to resurrect the sport of baseball, because it happens that his daughter, Gwen, is a pitching prodigy who has spent her childhood honing her skills in an underground league. Baseball offers a way out and up for Gwen, but she's not sure that what she would gain is more valuable than what she would have to leave behind. The juxtaposition of America's pastime and the AI-enabled surveillance state Jen presents here is brilliant. Sports are a classic national obsession as well as an avenue to fame and success for the disenfranchised. In this sense, Gwen's story feels familiar, and the ease with which the reader identifies with this narrative helps to make everything else about AutoAmerica seem eerily familiar, too. We recognize the world Jen creates because it is, finally, nearly identical to our own. Beautifully crafted and slyly unsettling.

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Starred review from January 1, 2020
Gish Jen's stealthy wit lures us into contemplation of our worst failings and our saving graces. Here she imagines a dystopian AutoAmerica, where the Netted live productive if severely surveilled lives and the Surplus have lost jobs to automation or because they're designated Unretrainable, like Grant, a former professor and the novel's piquant narrator. Most Surplus in this flooded world are forced into Flotsam Towns, but Grant and his family?wife, Eleanor, a courageous attorney and survivor of government incarceration and torture, and teen daughter, Gwen?have a bossy AutoHouse and an actual garden. Like other resisters, they call the AI-ruled state Aunt Nettie in a wry play on Big Brother. And their strategic opposition to Aunt Nettie intensifies as Gwen grows into her preternatural gift: she has a powerful throwing arm. Baseball has been outlawed for the Surplus, so Grant and Eleanor launch the Underground Baseball League. But nothing goes undetected and soon star pitcher Gwen is being courted by Net U and lured to the other side. In this astutely realized and unnervingly possible depiction of a near-future world, Jen masterfully entwines shrewd mischief, knowing compassion, and profound social critique in a suspenseful tale encompassing baseball ardor, family love, newly insidious forms of racism and tyranny, and a wily and righteous resistance movement that declares "RIGHT MAKES MIGHT."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2020

This intriguing departure from Jen (World and Town) tells a dire tale of nonconformity in a world gone mad. Though preternaturally gifted at baseball, specifically pitching, young Gwen is part of the "Surplus," a mass of disenfranchised people living on the edges of a future society in AutoAmerica--an America that has embraced authoritarian automation, creating a class of haves, the "Netted," and have-nots, the "Surplus." The Surplus, deemed unemployable, can't work but must consume, including free food. Gwen's mother, Eleanor, has been persecuted by the government as a resister to the draconian laws and is currently suing the state to expose toxic agents in the free food. In this stark context, Gwen grows up playing baseball in secret, but when her talent is discovered, she is recruited by Net U, the university for the privileged. She reluctantly agrees to attend and has her moral and personal resolve severely tested. VERDICT Though her talent and aplomb win out in a satisfying conclusion, Gwen struggles with the inequality and oppression of AutoAmerica, and readers will be left wondering whether we are living in such a culture today. Highly recommended for discerning readers. [See Prepub Alert, 7/1/19.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019

In a postapocalyptic AutoAmerica that's mostly flooded and ruled by the Internet ("Aunt Nettie") with a nasty brew of artificial intelligence, surveillance, and pious lecture, the fair-skinned "Netted" live on the high ground and the darker-skinned "Surplus" in the swamps or on the water. One Surplus girl, though, proves to be a baseball genius and is drafted to play for AutoAmerica as it reenters the Olympics, but her mother challenges the idea of her crossing over. From the multiply honored author of Typical American.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.