enneđź“š reviewed Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Death of the Author
3 stars
This is an unexpected novel about disability and family and writing and fame and stories. Subjectively, I don't think it all cohered in the way I wanted. The story within a story felt particularly heavy-handed, and it weakened the impact of the titular theme's exploration. I can imagine it landing for other people, but it's all just a bit too loose for me.
There is a meta element near the end, which I think the reader can choose how to interpret, although the real answer feels besides the point. It feels there to reinforce the book's larger point about what death of the author means—Okorafor is stating here that "author, art, and audience [...] create a tissue, a web, a network". The fact that this is such a personal work for Okorafor along multiple dimensions only adds to this feeling, as they seem inseparable from the book itself.
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This is an unexpected novel about disability and family and writing and fame and stories. Subjectively, I don't think it all cohered in the way I wanted. The story within a story felt particularly heavy-handed, and it weakened the impact of the titular theme's exploration. I can imagine it landing for other people, but it's all just a bit too loose for me.
There is a meta element near the end, which I think the reader can choose how to interpret, although the real answer feels besides the point. It feels there to reinforce the book's larger point about what death of the author means—Okorafor is stating here that "author, art, and audience [...] create a tissue, a web, a network". The fact that this is such a personal work for Okorafor along multiple dimensions only adds to this feeling, as they seem inseparable from the book itself.
There wasn’t another button to not accept. And if she didn’t tap it, maybe the doors wouldn’t open, and she’d end up talking to customer service for an hour. Besides, she was alive and the SUV had done its job. When one got into an autonomous vehicle, one knowingly accepted certain risks.
This is a minor point, but there is some wild techno-optimism on the page. It's hard to tell how much of this is a deliberate nod to science fiction's own default optimism, and thus is more of a storytelling device to embellish the "realistic" point of view. I could especially see this with a given reading of the meta element at the end.
There's just so much of this opinion woven throughout: early in the novel, Zelu uses an automated vehicle: "she could be like a robot with built-in wheels ready to carry her whenever she wanted." I thought the above quote about being forced to click accept to escape said automated vehicle might be the beginning of a more critical arc, but it was not to be. On top of that there's also ai robot exoskeletons, a (creepy to my eyes) billionaire with a private spacecraft company, and experimental space vaccinations (to add chromosomes for essential amino acids) that Zelu accepts without hesitation. This book isn't really a story about tech cynicism though, no matter how much of that I am bringing as a reader. If anything, this optimism ties into how Zelu's family continually denies her agency and respect and are always airquotes protecting her from the perceived dangers of the unknown and novel.
This tech optimism is so at odds with my own opinions that it's quite jarring. I can't read this unvarnished optimism abstractly—I am compelled think about the "tissue, web, and network" of capitalism and exploitation that these technologies are contextualized in, even as they create possibilities and accessibility.