Speak : A Novel
Author(s): Louisa Hall
A thoughtful, poignant novel that explores the creation of Artificial Intelligence—illuminating the very human need for communication, connection, and understanding.
In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the seventeenth century, to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human, and what it means to be less than fully alive.
A young Puritan woman travels to the New World with her unwanted new husband. Alan Turing, the renowned mathematician and code breaker, writes letters to his best friend’s mother. A Jewish refugee and professor of computer science struggles to reconnect with his increasingly detached wife. An isolated and traumatized young girl exchanges messages with an intelligent software program. A former Silicon Valley Wunderkind is imprisoned for creating illegal lifelike dolls.
Each of these characters is attempting to communicate across gaps—to estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human—shrinking rapidly with today’s technological advances—echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard, or understood.
Review(s):
“SPEAK is that rarest of finds: a novel that doesn’t remind me of any other book I’ve ever read. A complex, nuanced, and beautifully written meditation on language, immortality, the nature of memory, the ethical problems of artificial intelligence, and what it means to be human.”
“SPEAK reads like a hybrid of David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood; a literary page turner that spans four centuries and examines the idea of who and what we define as human. Louisa Hall has written a brilliant novel.”
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.
“strange, beautiful and unputdownable”
“Hall capably weaves the stories to form a beautiful rumination on the nature of memory and the frailty of human relationships.”
“While the novel’s ambitions are high-concept, Hall’s narrative is notable for its persuasive heart… Speak gazes boldly forward and lovingly back in order to report on the nature of what it means to be human now.”
“Hall delivers a dystopian A.I. novel with real heart and soul. Told through 17th century diary entries, letters by Alan Turing, court transcripts in 2040 and instant messages between a bot and a young, brokenhearted girl, this book is strange, beautiful and unputdownable.”
“[A] stunning new novel... Comparisons to Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, and Helen Phillips will abound, but the remarkable Speak is a unique creation that stands on its own.” -Bustle
“Stunning and audacious… It’s not just one of the smartest books of the year, it’s one of the most beautiful ones, and it almost seems like an understatement to call it a masterpiece.”
“Louisa Hall grapples with what it means to be human and how artificial intelligence will fit into those definitions in her ambitious new novel… It’s a complicated but compulsively readable tale, blending the voices of people who wonder whether they’ll ever be heard or, more importantly, understood.”
ISBN: 9780062391209