Speak

Hall's work is less a novel than a collection of diaries of a half-dozen people whose lives stretch from the 1600s to the near future. Their writings explore the nature of intelligent thought, communication, and what it means to be human. Seven narrators portray the characters--and one robot--with varying styles and quality. Some are intriguing and endow characters with personality. Others literally "read" the entries with little passion. The core of the story is the development of a "baby bot," an intelligent robot that is both a toy and a friend to children. Eventually, the robots are destroyed because children prefer them to family. The other characters in the audiobook somehow contribute to the eventual creation of the robots, even if only philosophically. M.S. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

May 25, 2015
Spanning nearly 400 years, the uneven latest from Hall (The Carriage House) merges truth with fiction to relate the history of MARY3, an artificial intelligence software found in a doll banned for causing mysterious ailments in children, and the imprisonment of its developer, Stephen Chinn, in the year 2040. The novel unfolds through epistolary means: Chinn communicates to the reader via memoir; Alan Turing, the novel’s lone nonfictional character, is responsible for much of the original concepts behind artificial intelligence and is depicted through his correspondence from the 20th century; Karl Dettman, the developer of the original (but fictional) MARY talking computer in the 1960s, and his wife, Ruth, who aims to turn MARY into MARY2, a thinking machine, also converse with each other through letters, in the 1960s; Mary Bradford, an early pilgrim from England to Massachusetts, subject of Ruth Dettman’s academic work, and namesake of the MARY computer, is represented by journal entries from 1663; and MARY3 finds voice in court transcripts presented at Chinn’s trial in the year 2035. Throughout, Hall aims to write about both technology and the preservation of memory. Characters claim that, in order to understand one another, they must “ several time periods in mind at once.” But while some story lines prosper, others—the Turing and the Dettman sections, in particular—strain under stilted structures. Characters rarely speak to each other (except in letters, many of which never get replies), resulting in some flat passages.

Starred review from June 15, 2015

Hall's ambitious second novel reads like a cross between the BBC show Black Mirror and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. It's told in different voices from various time periods, but the main narrative takes place in the near future. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been advanced to create realistic "baby bots," which serve as the companions of human children living in mysterious "developments" until they become too attached. The creator of the bots is in prison, telling his side of the story. His precursor, a programmer from the 1960s who created an earlier version of the AI, is writing letters to his wife, who is translating the journal of a pilgrim to the New World. Mary, the name of her pilgrim, is also the name of the AI. We also hear from Alan Turing, through letters to the mother of his deceased best friend. Even if this sounds confusing, it isn't. Hall capably weaves the stories to form a beautiful rumination on the nature of memory and the frailty of human relationships. VERDICT There's something for everyone in this novel, which moves at a fast pace but goes in depth with each character's moving struggle to be heard Recommended for readers of literary fiction, sf, or historical dramas. [See Prepub Alert, 1/5/15.]--Kate Gray, Worcester P.L., MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015

A young Puritan woman traveling to the New World with a husband she doesn't love. A computer scientist reaching out to his distant wife. A traumatized girl who speaks with an intelligent software program. A jailed Silicon Valley whiz kid. And Alan Turing, writing to a best friend's mother. All are trying desperately to communicate. Hall's debut, The Carriage House, was memorable.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

A novel with past and future settings and an artificial intelligence theme that isn't really science fiction. A Silicon Valley innovator in a Texas prison in 2040 musing about his crime: building an artificial intelligence. Evidence from his trial: transcripts of conversations between a little girl and a computer program. A computer scientist in 1968 who escaped Nazi Germany as a child musing on his conflict with his historian wife, also a Holocaust refugee, over whether to create a computer program with human memory. Alan Turing, the father of 20th-century computer science, writing letters to the mother of a beloved boarding school friend. A 17th-century Puritan adolescent whining to her diary as she crosses the Atlantic with her family. And an artificially intelligent doll, her battery running down, on a truck heading for a dumping ground in the desert. It's possible to imagine these elements adding up to an interesting exploration of memory, love, and what it means to be alive. This novel, though, is strangely static. The action happens offstage, to be mulled over later with reproachful melancholy, and none of the voices is compelling or convincing, particularly the historical ones. An extended complaint about how kids today pay too much attention to their electronic devices. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 15, 2015
In the near future, children, mostly girls, become so attached to their babybotslifelike, speaking dollsthat the bots are banned. After the babybots are gathered up and shipped to the desert, the children start to stutter and then to freeze. One, Gaby, is only able to communicate with MARY3, a cloud-based intelligence thirsty for her story. Through excerpts from a variety of sources, the development of artificial intelligence is revealed, from the diary of a teenage Puritan on a ship to America with her family and new husband to the letters from Alan Turing to his best friend's mother to the memoirs of a Holocaust survivor who refuses to give his computer program the ability to remember, thus estranging him from his wife. Meanwhile, Stephen Chinn, creator of the babybots, works on his memoir from prison. Much like Daniel H. Wilson's Robopocalypse (2011), Speak relies on primary-source documents to tell its story. An even better comparison is to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004) for the way Hall subtly weaves a thread through a temporally diverse cast of narrators. Like all good robot novels, Speak raises questions about what it means to be human as well as the meaning of giving voice to memory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)