Qualityland

October 14, 2019
The latest from Kling (The Kangaroo Chronicles), already in production at HBO, is a hilarious romp through an absurd hypercapitalist dystopia. After the third “crisis of the century” in a decade, a country is renamed QualityLand. There, each person is named after their parents’ professions, has a social media feed specially created by a corporation, and is assigned a level from 1 to 100, which dictates what partner someone can match with, what job someone can have, and so on. Peter Jobless is a low-level metal recycling scrapper who, one day, receives a delivery from TheShop that he didn’t order—not unusual in itself, as TheShop anticipates all desires (its motto is “We know what you want”)—but more importantly, that he doesn’t want. Aided by the defective robots living under his shop that he saved from the scrapper, Peter embarks on a journey to return his unwanted delivery. Peter’s quest unfolds against the backdrop of a presidential election, where voters can choose between a maximally intelligent, socialist-minded robot programmed for objectivity, and a celebrity right-wing chef, prone to contradicting himself in the same sentence. No need to guess who’s leading the polls. Sharp and biting, the most implausible aspect of Kling’s novel is the relative note of optimism that ends it. This is spot-on satire.

November 1, 2019
An outcast in a supposedly utopian future tries to figure out what's wrong with the world and how to fix it. Join the club. Well, sure, why not? Kling, the author of a bunch of texts about living with a kangaroo that got translated into a podcast and then turned into three books (all in German, so Google Translate is your friend), enters mainstream author mode with this bitter satire of consumer culture and the modern political sphere. In this kind of book, there's typically an ordinary guy to represent us, the reader--think Arthur Dent as opposed to Ford Prefect in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Our main guy here is Peter Jobless, although the point of view bounces around all over the place. Welcome to QualityLand, where everything, from your stuff to your love life, has been optimized for you by algorithm. If you couldn't tell from his moniker, Peter is a bit of a screw-up, just coming off a long-term relationship with Sandra Admin, who's happily dumped him based on the admonishment of QualityLand's dating service, QualityPartner, which matched them up automatically in the first place. Black humor abounds: There's John of Us, the political candidate who happens to be an android, and TheShop, which essentially serves as the company store for the world. The interstitial bits--news bulletins, guidebook entries, and the inevitable comments section--are particularly funny and give context to QualityLand's odd rules and tics. Despite the novel's comic approach, the nature of the narrative is heavily political, holding up a black mirror to our own troubled times. In addition to the pitch-black political satire, the novel's portrayal of economic inequality highlights a problem that wreaks havoc on our own lives. The characters aren't particularly likable and the narrative is a bit unhinged, but these days, a little comic relief might do us all some good. How much you enjoy this is in direct proportion to how much trouble you think we're all in. Sleep tight.

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Starred review from November 1, 2019
Personalized literature you are guaranteed to like! Combat robots gamers control in actual battle! Personal digital friends?like human friends, only better! Welcome to QualityLand, where everything is superlative, existence is an echo chamber, your surname is determined by the employment of your parents at the moment of conception, and the only button you're allowed to click is OK. Algorithms determine everything about a person's life: whom they date, who their friends are, and what the next exciting delivery from TheShop? the world's most popular online retailer ?will be. Machine scrapper and ordinary guy Peter Jobless unwittingly upsets this tidy existence by trying to return a product that he doesn't want. Since QualityLand society hinges on the belief that personal profiles can never be incorrect, he is told it's not possible. Awakened to a new purpose, Peter goes on a quest with the help of subversive hackers and a band of misfit robots. Kling's sharp observations target the economy, the law, xenophobia, relationships, security, and government, sparing few and exposing with delightful brutality how close QualityLand is to reality. The dark technological visions of Black Mirror are served up with humor by a worthy successor to Douglas Adams, and it's in development for HBO.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)