I’ll be honest. I either did not ‘get’ most of the book or I was not the intended audience. Maybe the book produced in me a lulled state in which I could not absorb any text content. Maybe I wasn’t feeling the greatest and I was overly tired throughout the weekend in which I read the majority of the book.

There are many potential excuses, I suppose. This book just didn’t really do it for me. I wanted to quit at times and that rarely ever happens.

Here are my chief complaints:

The first chapter of the book forces you into a situation that might have been interesting had I only known what was going on. Instead, I had no idea why things were happening, to whom they were happening, and what anything meant. Was it significant when viewed from the other side of the book? I can’t remember.

The book started out using very strange language choices (to the uninitiated, that is) including some things that seemed outright grammatical or vocabulary errors. I did not go back and revisit that chapter when I had finished, however, so maybe those things would have made more sense, maybe not.

The title of the book is highly confusing (“producted” makes no sense without context and even then, it’s a bit odd). We don’t even learn how to pronounce “ə” (schwa) until approximately halfway through the book. We never actually learn what ə is or what it does. We only know it’s an abstract concept that might fulfill various technological and social functions.

The entire book is written in an abstract kind of way. I might have difficulty explaining it, but I’ll try. The narrator and main character chose to obscure her name so we only know the first letter. She also does this for most of the other characters. She has led a very ordinary life that is also quite different from the norm, somehow both boring and interesting. Her main claim to fame is that she “dated” a young man once, and he later became politically important. It is in the telling of her past that my interest was piqued. It was written in a way I could see myself write. Unfortunately, it was also relatively disjointed and emotionally stunted. She described the things a younger version of her and the guy did. Unless I’m misunderstanding, he would begin to have sex with her while she was asleep. She stripped naked for him to practice his depositions. He seemed distant and strange, but so did she. She never objected to any of the strange things they did. He moved her into a former stable in the city, where she pined away for him (as best she could in her strange emotionally distant way) as he basically ghosted her. What began as a relationship retelling – that might have falsely promised emotional connection – grew into a weird and completely toxic situation. Neither character ever seem to grow emotionally, certainly not enough to recognize that their past social collision was anything but healthy. The guy moves on and she doesn’t even seem to care enough to do so.

A large part of my problem might be the utter unlikability of the main character. The heroine or narrator of most books and I usually become fast friends. I often really like main characters who are women. Maybe it’s the genre difference, but I can’t even put my finger on what kind of genre this could be considered. This protagonist was seemingly emotionless. She was also vain in a very un-socially conscious way. She seemed to have no causes for which she would evangelize. She cared for little else but herself and her well-maintained appearance. She never grew away from or above that. She never advanced as a character. She’s just as emotionally stunted at the end as she is in the beginning and just as unlikeable.

I’m a very emotional person. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I like my protagonists to have at least a little bit of that in them, if not at the start, then as a result of character development throughout the story. As someone who can find a way to tie everything into my life, I’ve never felt so disconnected from a main character. I guess I’m relatively selective with the books I read, but I almost never have such animosity towards “the good guy” in a book. And to say there was “a good guy” implies there was a conflict, which, I suppose is accurate, but we never really learn enough about it to judge it at all.

In short, I do not recommend this book. I don’t know for whom it was written or why. I don’t even know if I care enough to find out. And those three things are strange for me to admit. I love books! But I didn’t love this one.

This is certainly a unique story. I'm not usually into politics or satire, so I was surprised that I liked this as much as I did. The author has a rather impressive a vocabulary, and gladly it didn't fee like it was just used to show off. This may not be a big seller, but it is a good story.

Thanks very much for the free review copy for review!!