Hum

I picked this out with a friend at the library, browsing the shelves and deciding on something we could read together.

Hum puts us vaguely further ahead in time, where we’re still in the process of wrecking the planet, texting on cell phones, and Amazon Prime (though not by that name or color scheme) is off the rails and/or operating at its peak. Hum is set in what seems like contemporary New York and contemporary Earth in general except for technological advancements that feel like natural, almost-obvious continuations of where we’re already headed.

Just like the things we’re living with now, this is great and terrible.

We follow a mother that agrees to have her face physically altered for an experiment, and in doing so earn money that buys her family time while they figure out how to stay financially afloat. They keep needing things and wanting things, and struggling with and against each other as the story progresses.

The book is split into three parts, and I started to worry toward the end of part one that it was going to be a slow read. Then I found myself fully drawn in and whooshed through the rest of the story.

The plot didn’t rise and fall with such a rush that I ended with the electricity that makes me want to start again. But Phillips wrote characters with such emotional clarity and relatable conflict that I felt invested and perpetually concerned about whatever would happen next.

Many sentences in this book could have been meditations on modern life.

The portrayal of commerce and surveillance rushing into private life managed to be funny and painful.

More than once I felt like the story and the world it drew me into were too close to home, too soon, to common and dreary to be fiction I could escape with and enjoy. But I’m glad I read this, because Phillips dialed up the intensity of some common dynamics to reiterate that our humanity, our togetherness, and our presence matter despite all the raging nonsense.