Synopsis
As the world falls apart around them, piece by piece, Abigail Fuller spends humanity’s final days looking after her husband David.
But that’s not true, not really. Abigail isn’t David’s wife. She’s not even human. She’s a replacement, built in the image of the real Abigail, who died sixteen years ago.
When the law changes in three weeks, Abigail won’t need to be David’s wife any longer. She won’t need to be a woman, or a human, if she doesn’t want to be. She’s going to be able to find out exactly who she is.
But if she’s not Abigail Fuller, who is she?
Both tender and powerful, Some Body Like Me explores the boundaries of sexuality and the indefinable human capacity for love at the end of the world. Perfect for fans of Emily St John Mandel, Kazuo Ishiguro and Sequoia Nagamatsu.
Review
Some Body Like Me is first narrated from the POV of a PCC, a personal companion computer, and I quite enjoyed that right from the start. I do tend to like AI characters that play a large role in books in general so that wasn’t really a surprise. I haven’t read many in this kind of setting though, post-war and after extreme climate change and as the partner and possession of a human.
“Machines are mocked for their origins, whilst humans destroyed the habitats of those related to theirs.”
There were some lines that I just loved. Sometimes it was commentary about the environment, sometimes it was about interesting social or ethical issues. Here and there, the internal dialogue topics did begin to feel a bit repetitive, but it also was fitting in many circumstances because the PCC was on the cusp of Emancipation so she had more freedom to make her own choices and consider the implications.
Parts 2 and 3 I struggled more to get into. In part 2, there was a lot of explaining that was stuffed into very few pages and while I did like knowing the information, it felt pasted into the first convenient location rather than being revealed more naturally. The repetitiveness also continued to happen throughout the rest of the book, which again made sense but eventually took away from the novelty of the book for me.
The exploration of sexuality was really interesting. As a seasoned smut reader, it probably didn’t make me as uncomfortable as it might be to some others, though no worries to those who don’t like lots of detail. There aren’t tons of spicy scenes and they don’t take up a lot of pages either when they do come around. The focus is more on ethical, moral, and technical aspects of the act.
Overall, I really enjoyed the limited world building we got, the philosophical aspects of the book, and having such a deep exploration of an artificial character. The major themes of sexuality and mortality in a dying world were interesting to experience. But sadly I did need something additional to keep me hooked after the halfway point. The repetitiveness and lack of anything truly dramatic (in the sense of action in the plot; there definitely were emotionally heavy things happening) eventually caught up with me, and then the ending went a bit over my head probably. It felt rushed and suddenly cut off to me, and I’m honestly contemplating reading it again.
As always though with books that give me mixed feelings like this, I want to know what else is coming from this author because drawing me in as well as they did at the start always has me curious about other ideas that might be floating in their heads.
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