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Speak

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LoveReading Says

LoveReading Says

Highly Recommended.

You might imagine that a novel about the development of an Artificial Intelligence might be dry or technical. Louisa Hall’s wonderful novel is anything but. This is a warm and rich tale of loss and love written in prose that is often poetic but always pulls you through. It should appeal to fans of David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood.

From a 17th century girl’s diary (I loved the spirit and courage of Mary Bradford especially), to the 2040 confessions of the man accused of creating machines, like Mary3, that are too human, via imagined letters of troubled scientific genius Alan Turing; this is a gripping weaving together of several very different stories. In less controlled hands this could be a problem but Speak’s threads come together to be always coherent and always touching. This is a story about how words and memories work to make us our characters and to allow us to be with other people. It’s about how we define ourselves and how we work out what love us.

Artificial Intelligences are becoming the stuff of reality but this SF novel shows that the search for AI says most about us and what makes us human. E.M. Forster implored us to “Only Connect” – Louisa Hall’s novel is all about that.

Simon Spanton

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