Made for Love
Alissa Nutting, 2017
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062280558
Summary
From the exciting and provocative writer of Tampa, a poignant, riotously funny story of how far some will go for love—and how far some will go to escape it.
Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane—his extremely lifelike sex doll—as her roommates. Life with Hazel’s father is strained at best, but her only alternative seems even bleaker.
She’s just run out on her marriage to Byron Gogol, CEO and founder of Gogol Industries, a monolithic corporation hell-bent on making its products and technologies indispensable in daily life. For over a decade, Hazel put up with being veritably quarantined by Byron in the family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked.
But when he demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips in a first-ever human “mind-meld,” Hazel decides what was once merely irritating has become unbearable. The world she escapes into is a far cry from the dry and clinical bubble she’s been living in, a world populated with a whole host of deviant oddballs.
As Hazel tries to carve out a new life for herself in this uncharted territory, Byron is using the most sophisticated tools at his disposal to find her and bring her home. His threats become more and more sinister, and Hazel is forced to take drastic measures in order to find a home of her own and free herself from Byron’s virtual clutches once and for all.
Perceptive and compulsively readable, Made for Love is at once an absurd, raunchy comedy and a dazzling, profound meditation marriage, monogamy, and family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1981-82
• Raised—Valrico, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Florida, M.F.A., University of Alabama
Ph.D., University of Nevada-Las Vegas
• Awards—Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction
• Currently—lives in Grinnell, Iowa
Alissa Nutting is an American author and creative writing professor. She graduated from high school in Valrico, Florida, (about an hour from Tampa, which became the title of her debut novel). She received her B.A. from the University of Florida, her M.F.A. from the University of Alabama, and her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. She has taught creative writing at John Caroll University in Ohio and the University of Nevada. She is currently assistant professor at Grinnell College in Iowa.
Writing
Nutting is author of the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (2010). The book was selected by judge Ben Marcus as winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction and was a finalist for a ForeWord Book of the Year.
Her first novel, Tampa, published in 2013, is based on a real-life story about a middle school teacher in Tampa who, in 2005, had sex with her students. Tampa is not far from where Nutting was raised—and the teacher in question was a classmate of Nutting. The novel is overtly sexual and was banned in some bookstores although Nutting says neither her publisher nor editors asked her to tone it down, They understood that the content needed to be explicit.
Nutting released her second novel, Made for Love, in 2017. It is an absurd take on the impact of modern technology on human intimacy. One character, the heroine's father, is in love with an inflatable sex doll, and another character in love with a dolphin.
In addition to her books, Nutting's writing has appeared in Tin House, Fence, BOMB, Oprah Magazine, and the fairy tale anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.
Personal
Nutting lives in Iowa with her daughter and her second husband, fellow Grinnell professor Dean Bakopoulos. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/3/2017.)
Book Reviews
[Hazel] is the rare literary heroine in whose company it would be a pleasure to absolutely wreck my life.… The book is a total joyride, dizzying and surprising, like a state-fair roller coaster that makes you queasy for a moment but leaves you euphoric in the end.
New Yorker
Bizarre and brutally funny… relentlessly entertaining… Made for Love is a whip-smart critique of our relationship with technology and the ways we connect to other humans.
Harper's Bazaar
Provocative and irreverent, Made for Love is an absurdly hilarious musing on love and marriage.
W Magazine
Made for Love has a deviant instinct that make it initially captivating — but it doesn't do the necessary other work of a good novel. For all the ostensible unexpectedness (again, dolphins), it rarely surprises. And, for all that it plays on the idea of intimacy, the book gives us little sense of why we might want it, if people are just screens for mishap and absurdist sex
NPR.org
Made for Love will be one of the funniest, most absurd books you’ll read this summer.… Hilarious, clever, and strikingly original, Made for Love speaks to the absurdity of our societal obsessions with technology and wealth.
Buzzfeed
Nutting’s uniquely hilarious voice is the perfect guide to this darkly surreal, extremely relatable universe, in which the absurd becomes expected and our own personal hells feel like they’ve been perversely rendered in neon, airbrushed paint.
Nylon Magazine
Hilarious… Nutting’s smart, ribald, and hugely entertaining new novel provokes many chuckles. Occasionally, she reaches higher, and grants the reader flashes of something truly great: a striking view of the pathetic, that Gogolian, absurdist sublime.
Rumpus.com
Nutting deftly exploits the comic potential of perverse attachments, here to sex dolls, aquatic mammals, and technological devices.… Hazel’s story and touches on relevant themes of anonymity and objectification, [but] it never fully works. Nonetheless, the novel charms in its witty portrait of a woman desperate to reconnect with her humanity.
Publishers Weekly
A sly satire of our tech- and prosperity-obsessed society.
Booklist
[D]istinctive…and…darkly absurd …. But character-building is not among [the author's] strengths.… While Nutting borrows plot elements from thrillers, narrative momentum is constantly undercut by back story and scenes that are odd and amusing but not entirely necessary. An uneven effort from a terrific writer.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; meanwhile, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Made for Love … then take off on your own:
1. Absurd is a word frequently used to describe Alissa Nutting's novel. Talk about the plot or character elements you find absurd. Consider the difference between the absurd and general humor. Why might a author turn to absurdity? For laughs? Anything else?
2. Okay… Jason's sex doll—what about it? How does the doll fit, say, thematically, into a novel concerned with the impact of high technology on life? (Btw, have you ever seen Ryan Gossling's 2007 film, Lars and the Real Girl. If so how does this compare?)
3. Describe Hazel. Is she a typical modern day heroine (accomplished, independent) …or sort of a parody of one. Talk about her upbringing (including the dreams about one of her teacher's tirades). Do you root for Hazel …or become impatient with her? Or what?
4. Then there is Byron Gogol. First of all, consider his last name and how the author might be having fun with us. Talk also about Gogol Industries and what it represents for society.
5. Is Jasper a feminist? Discuss!
6. Rachel compares love with starving: "when people are really hungry they will be driven to eat the inedible." Same with love. Do you agree with her assessment?
7. Follow-up to Question XX: consider that in Nutting's world, people would actually prefer the "non-edible" or non-lovable. They use stand-ins for human lovers: sex dolls, flamingos, dolphins. Why?
8. As Hazel and Byron's courtship plays out, do you see parallels with Fifty Shades of Grey? What is the author mocking?
9. Mrs. Cheese tells Hazel toward the end of the book, "I hope you win your soul back in a bet or something." Why does she say this? By the end, is there any redemption, especially for Hazel?
10. How did you experience the book? Did you find it funny, hilarious...or not? Did you have affection for the characters and their many foibles...or not? Were you satisfied with the outcome...or not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)