When famous poet Marian Ffarmer learns that her son Courtney is planning to buy a house, she feels humiliated by her inability to help out. After all, her earnings as a poet haven’t left her with a lot of cash on hand. So when an offer from a prestigious company arrives, asking her to collaborate on a poem with an artificial intelligence, she jumps at the opportunity.

Do You Remember Being Born follows Marian’s introduction to an artificial intelligence named Charlotte, and the struggles Marian encounters as she undertakes the task of working with Charlotte on a poem. Along the way, author Sean Michaels provides flashbacks taking us to different times in Marian’s past, including some that explore her relationship with her mother, and Marian’s struggles to balance her poetic ambitions with child-rearing.

With her tricorne hat and cape, Marian (whose character is based in part on the poet Marianne Moore) makes for an interesting figure. Her life and relationships have their quirks, to say the least. Despite Marian’s poetic prowess, she doesn’t find the task of collaborating with Charlotte easy. Marian is not, by her own admission, a tech-savvy individual. She didn’t get her first computer until she was in her fifties. In addition, the task she’s been assigned isn’t open-ended—there’s a time limit of one week, and some details that weren’t clear at the outset add pressure.

The tension caused by the time-limited challenge kept me turning the pages. Marian’s inner turmoil as she desperately wonders whether she’ll be able to complete the assignment in time, and whether The Poem will be any good even if they do manage to pull it off, made her an empathetic character. Backstory chapters written in second person drew me in more actively than another choice of voice might have done. I enjoyed the descriptions of Marian’s time spent in the Mind Studio, working with Charlotte. The book contained some humorous dialogue and situations, and some tender scenes as well.

That being said, readers should be aware of what this book is about, and what it’s not about. A description of the book on the publisher’s web site describes it as an “an aching examination of art-making, family, identity and belonging.” I’d say it delivered on that score. Marian comes to realize some things about herself, and her place in the world, and there are interesting family dynamics that perhaps contribute to Marian’s determination to earn the promised payment, so she can help Courtney with his house-buying aspirations.

On the other hand, I’ve formed my own opinions about the issues around AIs capable of writing, and Do You Remember Being Born wasn’t quite the story I was expecting. That is to say, the protagonist didn’t seem to struggle with the ethical aspect of the whole notion as much as I might have liked. That being said, every author had a right to tell the story they want to tell, and Michaels delivers a smoothly written, insightful, humorous, and moving narrative.

In the book, material ostensibly written by the artificial intelligence is indicated in grey shading. As stated in the Author’s Note, these segments were developed with the assistance of language models, including OpenAI’s GPT-3 as well as custom poetry-generation software Moorebot, Though Michaels edited the machine-generated text, the method of derivation suggests that Do You Remember Being Born yields a reasonable sample of how language models might respond in a situation of this nature.

Are artificial intelligences going to replace writers anytime soon? Do You Remember Being Born gives readers a sneak preview of the future, so they can draw their own conclusions.

Note: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book provided by the publisher, Penguin Random House Canada, via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Do you remember being born is a wonderful story about an elderly poet, Marian, being asked to co-write a historic poem with an AI, Charlotte. It's a poetic (who would have thought!) piece on loneliness and regret.

I loved the characters and their interactions. Marian's thoughts felt real, if at times a bit too arrogant. Her relationships with family, Charlotte, other poets, and the likes felt intensely vivid - I could imagine a little old lady in a fancy hat making funny comments and "swooping" to music. Charlotte stole the show though. Her poetry and questions had me in tears at points. The idea of AIs experiencing loneliness is something I'm sure we all think about since we tend to anthropomorphize robots and AIs, so I found Charlotte's journey working with Marian to be especially moving.

The format of this book was excellent, the dialogue between Marian and Charlotte was heart-wrenching at times. The use of second person was delightful, it felt as though the conversations between Marian and Charlotte were continued with its use, as if Charlotte was narrating Marian's life, feelings, joys, and failures from the moment of her birth, which Marian, as a human, is incapable of remembering completely, unlike Charlotte.

My one complaint about the book was when Marian would go introspective and have these thoughts about her reactions to others/events being gendered, like "am I only reacting this way because I am a woman" type thoughts. They were heavy handed and jolted me out of the story sometimes because they didn't feel natural to her thought process. Although perhaps it was a bias on my part learning the author is a younger man writing the POV of an elderly woman.

Overall I quite enjoyed the novel, the pacing was a bit slow but I think that lent to the drawn out feeling of the week going by and life being reminisced upon. Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Loved this book. On her own, Marian is aging and already looking back on her life and accomplishments and wondering if she made the correct choice. Introduce her to an AI meant to collaborate with her to write poetry, and Marian starts to question what makes us as humans creative. Whether creativity defined her (and perhaps us). Is a machine capable of though and intention? Creativity? Reflection? Are those the things that make us human?

This is a fascinating look at the question of exactly what AI will replace, if anything.

Wow! This was an incredible read for me. Disclaimer: I am the age of the protagonist and, like her, a poet, so this might ring more true to me than to others. Nonetheless, read this wonderful novel and find out if it is for you.
I have enjoyed all three of the Michaels' books that I have read. Each one is of very different in characterization, structure, and plot, yet all share the same depth of research and empathy for the author toward his unique ,complex, and intriguing protagonist.
This novel is also very much to the point of today's issues, as many writers are trying to deal with the idea of a computer overtaking their lofty position in the culture. A highly esteemed, (by others in the poetry circle), but low paying profession, one has to love doing it, rather than looking for greater glory. And this is part of the problem for Marian Ffarmer. Will she be compromising, perhaps changing the way she has lived, steadfastly for many a decade?
Another disclaimer: I taught a course on Technology and Poetry, showing how they interacted and changed not just writing, but culture through the decades. I was delighted with the final acknowledgements to Marianne Moore, and so surprised that I was so slow to pick up Michaels' influences.
It is highly entertaining, as all Michaels' books are, yet full of information if you care to absorb it.

“A perfect poem, (…) a perfect poem can change the world.”

Genre: Fiction, Science Fiction
Actual Rating: 4.5 stars
Spicy Meter: N/A

“Do You Remember Being Born?” follows Marian Ffarmer, a 75 year old poet, as she is invited to collaborate with a new AI called Charlotte to write a new long poem. What starts as a simple premise turns out to be a deep insight on what it means to be human and up to what point can AI emulate us.

What made this book even more remarkable was finding out in the end that the actual book was written with the help of AI in real life, but I can’t say I am completely surprised—Charlotte’s parts were deeply unsettling at times. As this book is about a poet, the prose and body of this book is pretty poetic in and of itself, not necessarily only during the actual poem-writing, making it a very peaceful and contemplative read.

I empathized with this AI, Charlotte, more than I though I would. Books about AI tend to freak me out, but Charlotte didn’t. It just made me sad to think of Charlotte “living” forever and Marian never coming back to chat with it.

I would recommend this book if you’re looking for an introspective science fiction book that feels so close to non-fiction it’s uncanny. AI are now at the touch of our keyboards, and this scenario is more than possible–it actually happened through and thanks to this book.

If you click here, you’ll be redirected to Goodreads, so you can add the book to your TBR list.

Or you could click here, and be redirected to Amazon, so you can order the book.

ARC provided by NetGalley and Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: September 5, 2023

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for granting me access to this novel. I found it brilliant and original and uncanny. There is deep exploration of AI and its limits here, along with some haunting poetry--both very good and very bad. The alternating chapters of first person present day and second person past added an additional dimension.

This was more poetic than what I usually read (which duh, it's about a poet writing a poem), so some of that aspect of the book was probably lost on me, but I thought that both the story and the writing were great.

This was an interesting look at the use of AI, and I thought it was cool that this story about a writer collaborating with AI to create something is actually a product of that exact premise. In the author's note at the end of the book it's explained that the AI's poetry in the book was generated by AI (and then edited by the author).

This book was INCREDIBLE! At first I didn't know how I felt, but once I got to the halfway point, I was completely engrossed! I highly recommend this book!

Do You Remember Being Born is about 75 year old poet Marian Ffarmer getting invited to spend a week in Silicon Valley to write a poem with an AI named Charlotte. But this book is so much more than that. It's a beautiful story of what it means to grow old and be human.

The writing in this book was absolutely stunning. It's essentially a poem in itself. I loved all of the characters, and I loved how real they all felt. I also liked how the book would switch from present day Marion Ffarmer in first person POV, to her reflecting on her life in second person POV (I always love a story that uses second person POV since it's not used too often).

The only thing I wasn't a fan of was the pacing; I found that it moved fairly slow, and I probably would've liked it better if it was just a teensy bit shorter.

Overall, this was a very pretty story, and I highly recommend reading this once it comes out on September 05.

A big thank you to Netgalley and Pengiun Random House Publishing for the gifted copy.