Synopsis:
Finding a human connection online has become impossible. Enter Liv: a dating app that matches people with dead bodies. Somehow, it has taken the world by storm. Millions of users are convinced that life with a corpse presents a better alternative to conventional relationships. Flailing against Liv’s popularity, venture capital superstar Tom Williamson–whose company is funding Liv –isn’t buying it. Mostly because dating an embalmed cadaver, let alone monetizing it, is obscene. Believing that Liv is the future, Auden White, the insufferable “visionary” behind the app begins demanding more and more funding, quickly making enemies with Tom. It’s no secret that Tom struggles with people, dead or alive, but when he has a chance meeting with the woman who knows Auden (and his secrets) best, Mara Reed, he realizes everything is about to change for all three of them. With Liv’s userbase growing by the day, the need for cadavers rapidly increases. Humanity might not want to connect with other living, breathing people anymore, but they do want to connect with something. What could go wrong?
Review:
At its necrotic heart, if you were to peel back its pallid, waxy, layers of embalmed skin, and peek behind its glazed, unblinking eyes, Sarah G. Pierce’s “For Human Use,” is a rom-com, really. A quite hilarious triangle with that tried and tested formula of love at the time of conflicting interests and incompatible loyalties, this is a romance in the context of capitalism, bureaucracy… and the creation of a dating app for cadavers. Sweet, no? I probably don’t need to tell you now that Pierce’s debut is an unflinchingly brave book, nothing if not fearless in confronting a dense cluster of the most taboo taboos in its pursuit of both stinging satire and utterly terrifying social horror- as if online dating wasn’t scary enough. I found it to be akin to a riot in that it is both uproariously funny and absolutely revolting. Whether you are concerned, amused or glue-trapped between the two “For Human Use,” is undeniably entertaining.
We follow Tom Williamson who is a venture capitalist with Kane Investments. Call him crazy, squeamish, conservative, but there’s something distinctly off about Auden White and his pitch. It could be the unwavering confidence of his approach but the more likely option to me seems that it’s his start-up. Liv is a dating app in which the living swipe right on the dead. When they do the corpse arrives at your door, boxed up, embalmed and ready for companionship. How convenient. Tom hates it, ever the traditionalist, but his boss Robert and colleague Lorraine are dazzled by and fully behind Auden’s vision. Perhaps most horrifyingly, as a business, they’re perhaps right to be, because quickly membership soars and engagement climbs- the general public are all in on Liv.
There’s a level of world-building in “For Human Use,” that feels both formidable and incredibly subtle- and it’s done perfectly. Pierce creates a wildly detailed reality that reads like a marginally adjusted present tense. Within it, a space is not only created but exploited and monetised, for necrophilia. The infrastructure is familiar- capital flows and markets respond, the zeitgeist shifts and language changes. When one looks at government overreach, autonomy, the internet, AI, and a whole host of other more current issues, Pierce’s America is not ever radically unlike the non-fiction version. Liv is absorbed into an ecosystem of venture capital and tech culture identical to our own with obscene ease. Frankly, it’s pretty terrifying and so very impressive.
Tom is an incredibly interesting character. Initially he comes across as sort of an arsehole. But he quickly finds himself in a social situation in which his opinion, that being that necrophilia is at least rather objectionable, is a minority one, and considering (I really do hope) that we are isolated alongside him in this belief- we sort of have to be on his team. Flaws aside, he is the closest thing we have to a moral anchor and in this epic showdown between finance guy and tech bro, he is the lesser of two evils. The rest of the cast are afforded the same complexity, all have their own interests, loyalties and conflicts. None of them are perfect people, and whilst there’s certainly a spectrum of culpability there is no malicious moustache twirling either. Whilst one might come for the tinder for dead bodies concept, it’s the interpersonal drama, shifting alliances and the love triangle resolution that you stay for.
A smart, brave and unnervingly timely novel, “For Human Use,” is a book that is both absolutely deranged and startlingly plausible. In her funny and vicious debut Pierce wields discomfort intelligently and makes the unthinkable imaginable- all without collapsing into mere shock, provocation or its own audacity. “For Human Use,” has put on our radars a writer with nerve, and this book is truly unlike any love story that I have ever read.
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