book-blog.com: Kirn, Walter: The Unbinding

Anchor Books © 2006, 165 pages
3 stars

Note: I read this book in part for The Sunday Salon. See these related posts: chapters 1-4, chapters 5-9.

When we meet him, Kent Selkirk seems like a nice guy. He's a formerly lost soul who found himself, or at least a purpose, when he began working for AidSat. AidSat is a kind of über-OnStar system, a company that monitors its subscribers' vital signs constantly via miked tiepins and bracelets, whose employees are always available to offer assistance of any kind--from product reviews to relationship advice to the dispatch of a police cruiser or ambulance. Kent is romantically interested in an AidSat subscriber, a certain Sabrina who happens to live in his complex, and he avails himself of AidSat's database and monitoring tools to gather information about her.

AidSat is a kind of über-OnStar system, a company that monitors its subscribers' vital signs constantly via miked tiepins and bracelets, whose employees are always available to offer assistance of any kind--from product reviews to relationship advice to the dispatch of a police cruiser or ambulance.That's part of the story anyway. Or is it? And is Kent even a good guy? Selkirk's novel is told from multiple perspectives, largely through journal entries, email, and inter-agency memos. Kent, for example, offers his version of events in posts to an online journaling site. But it turns out that he is not necessarily a reliable reporter of events. Indeed, as far as I can tell no one in the book can be trusted, or at least, we don't know whom to trust. The various characters are purposely misleading one another--and us--and one or more of them may be deluded. It's a difficult story, in short, to get one's head around.

The Unbinding was originally written in serial form for publication in real time on Slate.com. (The book retains "hyperlinks" of a sort--text that appears here in bold was linked when the book was in digital form. One can go to the author's web site to follow the links, but it's not necessary.) It's genesis alone makes Kirn's book interesting. And I find AidSat a very appealing entity as well--an almost omniscient, presumably mostly benevolent near-deity, man-made, made up of innumerable components. Sort of like the internet. Big Brother 2.0. But I'm afraid the book itself, an exploration of the dangers of intrusive technology, was too cryptic for me to fully appreciate.

Tags: book reviews, books, The Unbinding, Walter Kirn