The Word Exchange
Alena Graedon, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385537650
Summary
A dystopian novel for the digital age, The Word Exchange offers an inventive, suspenseful, and decidedly original vision of the dangers of technology and of the enduring power of the printed word.
In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted "death of print" has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are things of the past, and we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but also have become so intuitive that they hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange.
Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL), where Doug is hard at work on the last edition that will ever be printed. Doug is a staunchly anti-Meme, anti-tech intellectual who fondly remembers the days when people used email (everything now is text or videoconference) to communicate—or even actually spoke to one another, for that matter.
One evening, Doug disappears from the NADEL offices, leaving a single written clue: ALICE. It’s a code word he devised to signal if he ever fell into harm’s way. And thus begins Anana’s journey down the proverbial rabbit hole. Joined by Bart, her bookish NADEL colleague, Anana’s search for Doug will take her into dark basements and subterranean passageways; the stacks and reading rooms of the Mercantile Library; and secret meetings of the underground resistance, the Diachronic Society.
As Anana penetrates the mystery of her father’s disappearance and a pandemic of decaying language called "word flu" spreads, The Word Exchange becomes a cautionary tale that is at once a technological thriller and a meditation on the high cultural costs of digital technology. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979-80
• Where—Durham, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., Brown University; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Alena Graedon was born in Durham, North Carolina, and is a graduate of Brown University and the Columbia MFA program. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. This is her first novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A] propulsive, twisty future-noir.... [Graedon’s] vision of the future is less alarmist than alarmingly within reach. Her attention to language—and the breakdown of language—invites comparisons to writers like Anthony Burgess and Lewis Carroll. Anana is an Alice figure, and the New York City she lives in a grim, Web 4.0 wonderland.
Daily Beast
Sharp ... dazzling ... a snappy, noir-inflected vision of a future New York suffering from an epidemic of aphasia brought on by super-smartphones.... Graedon’s language is sparklingly inventive...[and] so enjoyable...Graedon is too good a writer, it seems, to let an opportunity for linguistic play slip ... Despite all of its considerable linguistic sophistication, the novel offers a blunt message: Words are good. Reading is good. Books are good.
Slate.com
(Starred review.) [A] spectacular, ambitious debut..... With secret societies, conspiracies, and mega-corp Synchronic's menacing technologies, Graedon deploys all the hallmarks of a futuristic thriller, but avoids derivative doomsday sci-fi shtick. Instead, her novel is rife with literary allusions and philosophical wormholes that aren't only decorative but integral to characters' abilities and limitations in communicating, and it succeeds precisely because it's as full of humanity as it is of mystery and intellectual prowess.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) What if we became so dependent on our gadgets that we lost our ability to speak? That's the big idea in Graedon's entertainingly scary debut... This is a remarkable first novel, combining a vividly imagined future with the fondly remembered past to offer a chilling prediction of where our unthinking reliance on technology is leading us. And, as you'd expect, Graedon's word choice is exquisite.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Language becomes a virus in this terrifying vision of the print-empty, Web-reliant culture of the 22nd century...[in this] complex thriller. In fact, the novel is as much about lexicography, communication and philosophy as it is about secret societies, conspiracies and dangerous technologies.... "The end of words would mean the end of memory and thought. In other words, our past and future." A wildly ambitious, darkly intellectual and inventive thriller about the intersection of language, technology and meaning.
Kirkus Reviews
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