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Meet Us by the Roaring Sea

A Novel

Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE
In the near future, a young woman finds her mother's body starfished on the kitchen floor in Queens, and sets on a journey through language, archives, artificial intelligence, and TV for a way back into herself. She begins to translate an old manuscript about a group of female medical students—living through a drought and at the edge of the war—as they create a new way of existence to help the people around them. In the process, the translator's life and the manuscript begin to become entangled.
Along the way, the arrival of a childhood friend, a stranger, and an unusual AI project will force her to question her own moral compass and sense of goodness. How involved are we in the suffering of others? What does real compassion look like? How do you make a better world?
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 16, 2022
      Kumarasamy’s dazzling if sometimes unwieldy debut novel (after the collection Half Gods) follows a young woman as she tries to unpack the past amid an unforgiving near future. Ada, 26, works as a trainer for an advanced AI model, and on the side, perhaps as a coping mechanism, she translates a manuscript written in Tamil during the 1990s, which she first encountered during her college years. The manuscript details a group of women students at a remote medical college who slowly descend into a cult of “radical compassion” while treating war refugees, inflicting as much suffering on themselves as possible in order to truly understand their patients. After the students receive televisions from the government, their philosophy becomes tested and a schism develops within the cult. Kumarasamy also gets into Ada’s interactions with Sal, an artist whose parents died in a self-driving car accident; and Rosalyn, Ada’s cousin and roommate who illegally performs memory experiments on a homeless man. While some of the thematic threads can feel underdeveloped or untethered, such as the AI subplot, Kumarasamy’s gorgeous prose and quiet meditations on memory will enthrall readers. This ambitious effort has much to offer. Agents: Bill Clegg and Chris Clemans, Clegg Agency.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

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  • English

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