Book Review – Connie Willis – Crosstalk 2016 Gollancz

Book Cover For Connie Willis's Crosstalk.

Spoilers

A rare misfire from one of my favorite authors. Crosstalk is a long novel with a totally unconvincing theme and mostly awful characters.

It centres on Briddey, a hopeless romantic working for a dubious communication tech company and surrounded by peer group pressure obsessed family and friends. She is somehow persuaded into having a new medical dating chip installed right into her brain. The chip will tell her if her chosen partner genuinely loves her or not. We are given no idea how the devise can be altered if the relationship fails, and it needs calibrating to seek new potential suitors wearing the devise.

Briddey is in a relationship with a man called Trent who is also due to have the devise implanted. After her surgery, Briddey discovers a startling, even terrifying side effect The devise has made her telepathic. Trouble is, she isn’t tuning in to Trent’s mind, but the head of co-worker, C B.

While C B is able to interact with her and guide her despite not having a chip devise himself, Briddey is also swamped by the cacophony of hearing thoughts in every head around her until C B advises her how to block them out by vaulting herself in a variety of strong rooms. It soon becomes clear that C B has much more love for Briddey than Trent does.

The biggest problem with this book is that the EDD devise in Briddey’s head isn’t the source of telepathy. She has that through having Irish blood, as does C B, and several other characters. Trent doesn’t, but he is involved in a conspiracy to draw the telepathic gifts out for putting them into the phones his tech company creates and sells.

What follows is an endless farcical runaround while a panicking Briddey realises that Trent is indifferent to her while saviour figure, and rather voyeuristic creep, C B, keeps turning up to hold her hand and guide her through the mental minefields.

Too many characters who know each other prove to be closet telepaths, including a zombie movie obsessed child, and the main nurse assisting the doctor doing the EDD implant surgery.

That Trent is intent on a plan to engineer telepathy that makes him virtually a supervillain, his behaviour is treated just as a mischievous basis for ending the relationship plans with him, and C B is working out how to switch off everyone’s telepathic gifts.

This could have been about the dangers presented by cyberpunk app use and human integration with tech, but the telepathy is largely independent of the EDD and somehow everyone Irish has highly developed natural telepathy. I have Irish blood but no such gifts.

By making the telepathy the theme, the sinister EDD devise and its promotion are marginalised to the point at which it might as well not exist. Briddey is reduced to a whimpering damsel in distress with C B as her convenient knight in shining armour and the villains are just treated as a nuisance rather than World threatening megalomaniacs. This could have been a darker edged satire, but Willis seems intent on a mushy rom-com with characters who are neither likeable or credible. A very disappointing work from a generally excellent author.

Photo by me

Arthur Chappell

If you like my writings and you would like to see more, you can help fund my activity with a modest donation or two to my new Buymeacoffee Donations Page https://buymeacoffee.com/arthurchappell?new=1