Lee knows she's the best. A professor favorite and fellowship winner, there's no doubt she'll land one of the coveted jobs at a Big Five corporation. So when, upon graduating, Lee is instead assigned to an unknown company in the dead city of New York, her life goals are completely upended.
In this new role, Lee's task is to gather enough research to train an AI how to be a friend. She begins online and by studying the social circle of her clueless, outgoing roommate Veronika. But when the company reveals it's part of a classified government mission to solve loneliness-an emotion erased from society's lexicon decades ago-Lee's determination to prove herself kicks into overdrive, and she begins chasing bolder and more dangerous experiences to provide data for the AI.
How far will Lee go to teach the algorithm? As the mysterious affliction spreads, Lee must decide what she's willing to give up for success and, along the way, learn what it means to be a true friend.
Loneliness & Company is an enchanting, gorgeously written novel about finding meaning and connection in a world beset by isolation.
Lee knows she's the best. A professor favorite and fellowship winner, there's no doubt she'll land one of the coveted jobs at a Big Five corporation. So when, upon graduating, Lee is instead assigned to an unknown company in the dead city of New York, her life goals are completely upended.
In this new role, Lee's task is to gather enough research to train an AI how to be a friend. She begins online and by studying the social circle of her clueless, outgoing roommate Veronika. But when the company reveals it's part of a classified government mission to solve loneliness-an emotion erased from society's lexicon decades ago-Lee's determination to prove herself kicks into overdrive, and she begins chasing bolder and more dangerous experiences to provide data for the AI.
How far will Lee go to teach the algorithm? As the mysterious affliction spreads, Lee must decide what she's willing to give up for success and, along the way, learn what it means to be a true friend.
Loneliness & Company is an enchanting, gorgeously written novel about finding meaning and connection in a world beset by isolation.
Critiques-
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December 1, 2023
Set in a near-future NYC, Dyroff's debut explores loneliness as a recent college grad conducts research for a secret government project, teaching an AI how to be a friend. The novel plumbs the depths of isolation and explores what humans will do to find connection. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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March 11, 2024
Dyroff debuts with an inventive dystopian novel set in a near future where human interactions are automated and America’s center of gravity has shifted from the coasts to the middle of the country. Lee, 27, graduates at the top of her class in a Minneapolis-based career placement program, expecting to land a job with one of the nation’s leading tech companies headquartered in the Midwest. Instead, her dreams are quashed and she’s sent to run-down New York City, where the historic financial district is now underwater, to work for an unknown outfit secretly programming a virtual friend named Vicky. There, Lee keeps to herself and doesn’t even bother to learn her co-workers’ names. Eventually, the company’s leaders explain their real goal: to address the problem of loneliness, an emotion supposedly removed from the Emotional Index several decades earlier but still plaguing people. When Lee realizes she’s more successful in training Vicky based on her own firsthand observations of human interactions than on researching what friendship used to be like, she tries to overcome her own sense of isolation by going on dates. The novel’s view of the future is particularly distinct in its depictions of dating life; there’s only one app, called Dating, and it requires users to select from predictive text when filling out their profiles. Dyroff also nails the ways in which single-minded ambition can obscure opportunities for connection. This brims with clear insight and unsettling visions of the world to come. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. -
April 15, 2024
Lee has dedicated her entire career to public service. In the dystopian future U.S. where she lives, certain jobs are determined by government placement. Successful in tech, Lee is shocked when, rather than being placed in a well-known organization, she is assigned to a new AI startup focused on creating artificial friendship. The office is headquartered in New York City, a shell of its former self after flooding forced most residents out of the metropolis. In this urban playground ghost town, Lee comes to realize that the artificial companionship project is about more than digital friends; it's about tackling an old-world concept called loneliness. Lee, it turns out, was specially chosen for the position because of her past experience with loneliness (or lack thereof). Dyroff's debut is fun to read, taking place in a world that's entertaining to ponder: what will our priorities be after the full AI renaissance? Dyroff is beyond imaginative, specifically so in building a world that's just close enough to present reality. Perfect for fans of Dave Eggers' The Circle.COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- The New Yorker Literary fiction for the concerned citizen who can't put her phone down.
- Debutiful, "Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2024" Dyroff's near future-set book is a bewitching story about technology and isolation. It will grip readers with mesmerizing writing and a tautly-paced plot.
- Publishers Weekly Inventive . . . The novel's view of the future is particularly distinct in its depictions of dating life . . . Dyroff nails the ways in which single-minded ambition can obscure opportunities for connection. This brims with clear insight and unsettling visions of the world to come.
- Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of THE EMPATHY EXAMS and MAKE IT SCREAM, MAKE IT BURN Charlee Dyroff's Loneliness & Company is a sharply etched and strangely propulsive story about artificial intelligence and authentic feeling: a canny, tender exploration of the stories we tell about our bonds with each other, and the realities we'd rather not face about our bonds with the technologies that shape our days.
- Emily Austin, author of EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM WILL SOMEDAY BE DEAD Naturally intelligent. An inventive, timely, and perceptive story about human connection and being alive.
- Jessica Francis Kane, author of RULES FOR VISITING It's such a great premise: a future in which loneliness has allegedly been eradicated. I was hooked from the start, and marveled at the poignancy of watching Lee relearn the basics of friendship for the sake of an AI program. Honestly, it felt like where we might all end up if we continue to let social media dominate our lives. Dyroff's brilliant story will make you want to hold all your-real-friends closer.
- Gina Chung, author of SEA CHANGE and GREEN FROG Charlee Dyroff's Loneliness & Company brings us into a world in which technology has solved almost all of our problems except that most universal yet alienating emotional condition of all-loneliness. Tender and hopeful, Dyroff's story glimmers with humor, empathy, and profound insights into the inner workings of the human heart and psyche. Her vision is utterly singular, captivating, and full of heart, reminding us of the incalculable intimacies of being alive. Reading this book felt like catching up with an old friend, or meeting a new one.
- Kate Greene, author of ONCE UPON A TIME I LIVED ON MARS This book is funny, tender, strange, and modern. Dyroff has written a bildungsroman for the robot set, a profound look at human curiosity and longing in a finely wrought near-future New York. Loneliness & Company resonates and pops; it infiltrated my dreams.
- Hermione Hoby, author of VIRTUE To inflict the demand of 'utility' on a novel is to succumb to just the sort of doomed tech logic that Dyroff skewers so nimbly and with so much intelligence in her debut. Nonetheless, if one use for literature is to make us feel less alone, then the author has succeeded brilliantly with Loneliness & Company. This is a tender, visionary, wide-hearted book that offers itself as a course corrective to our hyper-quantified, algorithm-craven age.
- Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of PIZZA GIRL Dyroff's novel brilliantly uses a futuristic, slightly off-kilter world to highlight the absurdity and pain of our current reality. However, Dyroff's sharp, electric prose and wry humor keep Loneliness & Company from ever feeling weighed down by its circumstances. With her debut, Dyroff has pulled off a truly impressive feat-writing a story about loneliness that isn't so much a cautionary tale, but a tender, heartfelt reminder to value your time on Earth and the people that make your days more than just a sunrise and a sunset. A new and talented writer to watch.
- Lara Vapnyar, author of DIVIDE ME BY ZERO Loneliness & Company is a stunning novel, full of lyricism, brilliance and quiet integrity, boldly tackling the most complex philosophical ideas. How do you define loneliness that plagues all of us, increasingly so? Is it a personal affliction or an existential condition? I'll be thinking about this novel for a long time.
- Wendy S. Walters, author of MULTIPLY/DIVIDE In Dyroff's deeply original novel, it is possible to see the future. Loneliness & Company invites us into a techno laden world that is
