The High-Rise Diver

January 1, 2021
A woman works as a secret handler to a disaffected entertainment star in a tightly regulated and surveilled society. In this Orwellian debut novel, Hitomi Yoshida, a remote psychologist, has been assigned to watch Riva Karnovsky after Riva abruptly quit working as a "high-rise diver," a professional athlete who jumps off skyscrapers while wearing a special flysuit(TM) that lets her take off just before hitting the ground. Hitomi's firm has been hired by Riva's coach and her corporate sponsors, who are desperate to regain control of their star, and it is Hitomi's hidden work to facilitate her return. Between monitoring Riva, Hitomi works at night for Call-A-Coach(TM) to earn enough credits to live in the city. As Riva becomes increasingly unresponsive, Hitomi hires a blogger from the peripheries to become a field agent and friend to Riva. This quickly becomes disastrous as she stops listening to instructions from Hitomi, who begins to spiral out of control herself as she faces worsening ratings from her supervisor and intrusive memories of the disappearance of a friend raised alongside her in an institution who could not meet optimization requirements. In this novel, translated from the German, characters have nowhere to hide from cameras, recordings, or the overarching expectation of perfection while being surrounded by the looming threat of exile. The story becomes increasingly horrifying as it becomes clearer that this society's expectation of excellence leaves no room for emotions, error, or deviance from the behavior that will most please corporations--indeed, there is no room to be human. Yet despite all of her training, Hitomi cannot stop herself from becoming deeply attached to Riva (whose name, one cannot help but notice, is also surrounded in the word "private") as she struggles to save them both. A searing work of speculative fiction. (speculative fiction, translated fiction)

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