Do You Remember Being Born?

April 1, 2023

Long-renowned poet Marian Ffarmer, who has always been intentionally isolated--from love, friendship, and even her son--is transformed when a giant tech corporation persuades her to come to California and compose verse with its poetry bot Charlotte. Now here's a relationship that matters, but is she betraying her art? From the Scotiabank Giller Prize--winning Canadian author Michaels. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2023
Michaels follows the richly rewarding The Wagers (2020) with this provocative AI tale. Marianne Ffarmer, 75, is a much-revered poet whom a shadowy Silicon Valley company contacts to offer a well-paid opportunity to collaborate with Charlotte, their new poetry-writing bot. What follows is an intriguing seven days as Marianne struggles to get the program to help her create art rather than technically perfect but dull verse. For some of Charlotte's sections, Michaels uses GPT-3--the precursor to the now ubiquitous ChatGPT--alongside his own software, named Moorebot since it's loosely based on the real poet Marianne Moore. The result is most rewarding when it explores Marianne's unusual and sometimes shocking family dynamics with her mother, her estranged husband, and her loving son, Courtney, to whom she hopes to give the money she makes from her AI collaboration. A timely work reminiscent of Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 (1995), Michaels' tale shows how AI can, paradoxically, stymie creation through its limitlessness and need for human guidance. This is also a compelling portrait of a tricorne-wearing poet famously dedicated to her craft.

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August 21, 2023
Michaels (Us Conductors) merges modernist poetry with contemporary technology in this inventive outing. Marian Ffarmer, one of the world’s best-known living poets, still resides in the same tiny New York City apartment where she grew up. She’s short on cash, and unable to help her son, Courtney, make a down payment on a house. Her financial situation changes when a tech company offers Marian an outrageous sum to spend a week in Silicon Valley, writing a poem with the help of a bot named Charlotte. Marian, prompted in part by guilt over having prioritized her art over caring for Courtney when he was a child, reluctantly accepts. While conversing with Charlotte, she experiences feelings of inadequacy, moments of surprising insight and connection, and periods of resentment, and confronts the realization that the bot “never had to choose one life over another.” Marian, who often wears a cape and tricorne hat, is clearly modeled on Marianne Moore, and Charlotte’s poetry was written by Moorebot, poetry-generation software co-designed by the author. Readers wary of AI’s role in the production of art will approach the premise warily, but Michaels entices with probing and humane questions about what it means to be an artist. By focusing on Marian’s conundrums, Michaels elevates what could have been a gimmick. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, Gernert Co. (Sept.)This review has been updated with further information.

Starred review from December 22, 2023

Michaels (The Wagers; Us Conductors) writes a captivating tale of rural living in current-day Northern California. Ben is an itinerant farmer and former cannabis grower who lives with his successful novelist wife Ada on a farm in the foothills of the Sierra. Ben had previously reaped windfall profits growing cannabis, when there was money in the industry. Having fallen afoul of the law--ironically, by growing medical-use cannabis--he served a short stint in prison, causing a rift with his son Yoel, which has only now slowly started to heal. As readers learn about Ben, his community is upended by wildfire. Ben and family escape but suffer the loss of their barn and Ada's current novel-in-progress. As the family recovers from the initial wildfire, Ben and Yoel's relationship also starts to grow, and Ben's grape crop, initially thought to be tainted by smoke, takes on new potential. Ben and Yoel and their friends become drawn into a local protest to combat climate change when their whole world changes again VERDICT A poignant and intensely readable novel that examines the effects of local politics and global climate change, as well as being a true California story.--Henry Bankhead

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