This novel, smartly translated by David Colmer, transported me directly to the hothouse world of wealthy Parisian families and the household staffers who know their lives so intimately. I loved the evocative scene-setting, and the dual timeline mystery came together seamlessly.
A twisty, slow-burn mystery set in Paris and the Netherlands that has become a Dutch sensation
In 1989, twenty-year-old Marie jumps at the chance to work as au pair in Paris—even though it means dropping out of her prestigious art program in the Netherlands. The city, the language, the complicated French family she works for all quickly overshadow the turmoil and pain she'd been reckoning with in school.
But years later, during the 2015 attacks in Paris, Marie is shocked to recognize her former teacher, the main reason she fled the Netherlands, pictured…
Gorgeous writing, a stunning plot, evocative scene-setting—I could not ask for more from this wonderful debut novel about social class and cutthroat competition at a women's college in the 1950s. Swift, surprising -- this fabulously creepy story had me on my toes from the first word to the last.
I'm a longtime fan of Susan Daitch, and this novel -- her fifth -- does not disappoint. The Adjudicator invites reflections on some of the most challenging and promising technologies of our time -- genetic modification, omnipresent surveillance, and artificial life. Like all of her novels, it's smart and meaty, packing a significant philosophical wallop while also delivering on character and plot. I loved it.
Award-winning author Susan Daitch's new novel, The Adjudicator, is a visionary cyberpunk mystery that explores the boundaries of consciousness and individual autonomy within an authoritarian state that controls the genetics of its citizens.
In a near future where the surveillance state legislates the genetic code of its citizens, babies are created in a laboratory according to a template set by parents and the corporation. It is a utopian world of perfect control, where disease has been eliminated and the human genome has reached apotheosis. Mistakes, though unlikely, still occur, and it is adjudicator Zedi Loew's job to fix them. One…
We're born unfinished, in need of everything-love, food, attention, care. The linked stories in Guardians & Saints explore the ways in which modern orphans fail to thrive. A girl loses her mother only to re-find her, in altered form, in a grim institutional afterlife. A group of friends spins helplessly around the death of a beloved teacher when his selfless pedagogy is called into question. Faced with the incapacity of those they depend on, Diane Josefowicz's characters appeal, with varying degrees of success, to stand-ins: teachers, mentors, therapists, guardians, and, occasionally, saints.
