An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green (2018)
Laura’s Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
I read this for a book club and the general consensus was pretty middling. Some aspects of this book were great, while others brought my overall rating down.
The Analysis:
April May is a young woman in her early 20s, living a fairly normal life in New York City until one day, a giant robot sculpture appears in the street. As one of the first people to see the giant Transformer-esque figure, April and her friend go viral after making a video about it and dubbing it “Carl”. It turns out there are “Carls” across major cities around the globe and no one knows why or how they arrived. April’s newfound fame forces her into the spotlight, where she must decide how to use her platform while trying to figure out what the Carls are and what they might want from us.
I have really mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, the story itself is incredibly original and interesting and it feels grounded in reality, despite the science fiction aspects. On the other hand, the story is unfocused by the end and gravitates away from the plotline I expected it to follow. The political commentary is heavy-handed and rather than focusing on the funky and original plot set up in the first half of the book, the plot devolves into a showdown between April and her ideological enemies.
The idea of the Carls and the story that stems from their arrival was great and incredibly well thought out, especially in the first half to two-thirds of the novel. I think this book is very readable, and I was hooked enough to finish it in just a few days, but I have some major issues with it as well.
The main character is both incredibly self aware but also falls into the trap of believing that she is right and her personal moral compass should be the one for literally all of Earth to follow. April takes some culpability for her less admirable actions, while still mostly blaming the opposing side for problems that arise, which I think is a major problem in politics today. Hank Green even seems to know that this is a problem, acknowledging it with quotes like, “It’s so much harder to actually define yourself and work to imagine the best possible future than it is to tear down other’s ideas.” The book seems to acknowledge the problems of political polarization while still vilifying one side, which seems contradictory and didn’t sit right with me. Much of this book was an enjoyable read, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it in the end.
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