Coverart for item
The Resource Tell the machine goodnight, Katie Williams

Tell the machine goodnight, Katie Williams

Label
Tell the machine goodnight
Title
Tell the machine goodnight
Statement of responsibility
Katie Williams
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either. Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly
Cataloging source
DLC
http://library.link/vocab/creatorDate
1978-
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Williams, Katie
Index
no index present
Literary form
fiction
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • Self-realization
  • Mothers and sons
  • Happiness
Label
Tell the machine goodnight, Katie Williams
Instantiates
Publication
Note
This item was generously purchased by the Friends of the Thunder Bay Public Library. 39341012505221
Control code
on1006531963
Dimensions
22 cm
Extent
287 pages
Isbn
9780525533122
Lccn
2017039824
Label
Tell the machine goodnight, Katie Williams
Publication
Note
This item was generously purchased by the Friends of the Thunder Bay Public Library. 39341012505221
Control code
on1006531963
Dimensions
22 cm
Extent
287 pages
Isbn
9780525533122
Lccn
2017039824

Library Locations

    • Brodie Resource LibraryBorrow it
      216 S. Brodie St, Thunder Bay, Ontario, P7E 1C2, CA
      48.381806 -89.246333