Best for:
People interested in exploring how technology affects relationships.

In a nutshell:
Four different stories involving eight different people intertwine against the backdrop of an event that makes national news.

Worth quoting:
“All that matters in content. New content. More content.”

Why I chose it:
Gift from a friend.

Review:
CN: Suicide; Non-consensual distribution of sexual images

A young teen boy films a marching band on the Golden Gate bridge, the members of which end up jumping to their deaths. He then posts the video to YouTube. An 18-year-old finds that her boyfriend has posted a video of them having sex to a porn site. A boy turns 18 but still can’t speak more than a few words, after an accident. A man learns of his sister’s death and feels responsible. A mother leaves her son after an accident, and tries to stay sober. A teen runs away.

This book explores relationships, and what happens when things go ‘viral,’ though it isn’t framed exactly as such. What happens to the person who has a sex tape posted against her wishes, without her knowledge, and everyone she knows sees it? What happens what a young teen films a mass suicide and then chooses to post it online, racking up views and comments. How does the decision to come up with pithy names for incidents and individuals impact the victims of the events?

I like how Mohr weaves these stories together, though there are a couple of parts that don’t entirely make sense. It’s not enough to spoil the book or anything, just a bit out of nowhere. I also perhaps am too far removed from being a teen (and I certainly wasn’t a teen with social media), but the inner monologues Mohr assigns to the 14-year-old who posts the suicide video online seems a bit what an adult imagines a kid would think, as opposed to what kids are actually thinking, if that makes sense. I mean, obviously a grown man isn’t going to know what’s in the head of a teen boy with the internet at hand, but still, the decisions here don’t exactly ring true to me.

Then again, a bunch of grown adult white supremacists were recently convinced by a failed real estate mogul / reality star and a dude who sells pillows to stage a coup, so perhaps I think too highly of what goes on in most people’s minds.

I don’t think I’d go as far as to recommend this book, but if one were to receive it as a gift, or come across it at a library, I think it’s a decent read.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it. ( )

On the rare occasion when I read fiction outside my normal genres (crime, spy, thrillers), I tend to enjoy quirky novels (such as 'Where You at, Bernadette', 'The Sellout', and 'The Martian') that both challenge and entertain. I picked up 'All This Life' at the local library on a whim and I'm glad I did. Quirky: check... Challenging: check..... Entertaining: check.

What I like best about this little gem of a novel is how it forces you to think about things you may not normally think much about: family relationships, people with disabilities, victims of abuse, on-line life vs. 'real' life, mental illness, and so much more.

I can't get into the plot without spoiling it, but in short it has multiple arcs, some of which are interrelated, great dialogue and a few scenes that'll make you chuckle but many more that will make you sad. The writing is excellent and the conclusion, although it's a bit predictable, is well done. I loved this book and will be diving into others in Joshua Mohr's catalog. ( )

All This Life by Joshua Mohr is exceptionally thoughtful, and a very highly recommended novel about our current information super highway. In All This Life Mohr takes our over exposed, interconnected lives, a tragic event, and ties together seven very different people.

The novel opens with an unnamed man pondering: "There’s one gigantic cause that no one talks about and it’s the foundation of my equation, my E = mc despaired: Human sadness is what’s heating up the earth. We are so somber, Albert, our lives are squared by despair and thus we all emit such a sad heat that our planet will torch unless we get it under control."

Then we are introduced to Paul and Jake, his son. They are driving over the Golden Gate Bridge when Jake sees a marching band. Jake likes "capturing real human life, snatching seconds away from those who don’t suspect an audience." As he films them with his phone, he captures a horrific event that leaves most of the band dead. After Jake posts his video of the event on youtube, the only video that captured the whole event from start to finish, it goes viral.

Noah, a man who lost his sister that day on the bridge has seen Jake's film online and can't believe someone would post that. He is in a world of pain and grief over his loss.

In Traurig, a small town in Nevada about an hour from Reno, Sara has just learned that her boyfriend has posted a sex tape of them online. Her cell phone is vibrating and text messages are flying. She's lost her job and it seems everyone knows about her indiscreet as the video goes viral. She turns to Rodney, an old friend who struggles to speak after an accident, and they leave together to find Rodney's mom, Kathleen (Kat), a caricaturist who lives in San Francisco. Kat left after his accident and hasn't contacted him since. She's sober now, though, and wants to reach out.

Sara ponders, "If there was a customer service center that regulated the whole information super highway she would have dialed it immediately. But it’s the wild west. Utter anarchy. No one’s really in charge, so long as you’re not trying to coerce a kid into bed or buying weapons." This is, of course, why these two videos exist online. Social media amplifies the interconnectedness of these lives. Sara watches Jake's video and he watches the one with her in it.

All these flawed and wounded characters will end up converging in a startling and dramatic conclusion. If all this makes it seem that Mohr's novel is very somber and gloomy, it isn't. There are moments of humor and there is a sense of hope at the end.

The focus on social media and how it is used and defines people today is clearly demonstrated by Paul and Jake.

Paul, who has to "basically police his co workers, or they’ll fiddle around on Facebook all day" is concerned for his son and for the whole generation because of the way they publicize everything - "these technologies that make it seem like a good idea to share shrapnel from your life, meaningless slivers of each day." He "examines the dangerous intersection of reality and the imaginary, where coding and technology seek to highlight and augment our already flawed human connections."

Jake, though, espouses the view of his generation. He didn’t do anything wrong when posting the video of the band. "This is what people do. This is how the world works. This is why we’re smarter now: We share everything with everyone, have access to each sight and sound. We are informed and connected! If they stop living in the past, they’d plug into this broadcasting consciousness, synapses firing all over the globe." "Content is Jake’s purpose. It is everybody’s purpose. And each single frame uploaded is a public service."

After finishing All This Life, I put everything Joshua Mohr has written on my wish list. The writing was exceptional. The development of the characters, even when working with so many, is incredible. The underlying message is timely. With all our connections, have we lost sight of the value of the personal, face to face, connections? Do we propose that our social media connections are truly personal connections? Is social media truly reflecting our reality, our lives? Do we need to share everything? Is content really our purpose?

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Soft Skull Press for review purposes.

( )

summer 2015