skygiants | (no subject)

As you may remember, Crosstalk was announced, my general impression was that it was basically going to be a Bellwether rewrite except instead of spending the book shouting at clouds about fads, Connie Willis was going to spend the book shouting at clouds about modern technology.

As it happens, I was both very right and very wrong. While both Bellwether and Crosstalk feature a romance between the only two people who are somehow immune to The Shallowness of Modern Existence set against a cast of thousands of sheeple obsessed with the latest gossip/fad, it turns out Bellwether remains a much better book than Crosstalk!

Crosstalk stars Briddey Flanagan, who works at a cell phone company. What does Briddey do at the cell phone company? I have NO IDEA, because we never see her doing any part of her actual job, or in fact doing anything at the office except flee from gossipy coworkers who want to talk about her office romance with [obviously evil] dreamy executive Trent, because everyone in Briddey's office -- and, indeed, perhaps everyone in this book -- walked out of a 1960's Doris Day film.

Briddey has no friends, but she does have several family members, each of whom has two character traits:

Briddey's Aunt Oona is very, very Irish
Briddey's sister Mary Clare is a helicopter parent to her nine-year-old niece, Maeve
Briddey's other sister Kathleen has bad taste in boyfriends

You may have noticed this is only a single character trait per person. The other character trait, which they all share, is that they have no boundaries and all seem very invested in and concerned about Briddey, who literally never has a conversation with any of these people in which she is not attempting to hide from them, flee from them, or get them to stop talking to her, usually by lying to them profusely.

You might think the moral of the story would be that Briddey and her family need to learn to set some boundaries, communicate honestly, and break the cycle of increasingly complex lies! About this, you would be very, very wrong.

The plot kicks off -- after several chapters illustrating how Briddey's cell phone is a terrible trial to her because her family keeps trying to CALL her on it or TEXT her on it, GOD, why will nobody leave her ALONE, clearly the problem is the technology and not, you know, the fact that Briddey doesn't know how to set boundaries and instead is engaged in a constant web of deceit and lies with everyone she knows and theoretically loves! -- when Briddey and her boyfriend [obviously evil] Dreamy Executive Trent decide to get the latest in relationship goals, a procedure that allows them to sense each other's emotions.

RANDOM FICTIONAL OFFICEWORKER: Brad and Angelina just had one of those procedures!
(CONNIE WILLIS: Look at my cool modern references! Just let anybody say that my books are out of date now --
BRAD AND ANGELINA: We're breaking up literally two weeks before this book is published.
CONNIE WILLIS: God fucking damn it!)

Alas, the nonsense science of the procedure somehow goes nonsense science wrong, and instead of sensing her boyfriend's emotions, she gains an instant telepathic connection with C.B., the genius curmudgeon with messy hair and poor hygiene who has a mad scientist workshop in the company basement and thinks communication is awful.

BRIDDEY: Oh man, the procedure's gone wrong and a dude I don't much like can now read my mind, I should tell someone --
C.B.: YOU CANNOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS, EVER. Instead, how about you concoct a series of increasingly-elaborate lies to tell everyone you know and love!
BRIDDEY: Um OK but I would very much like to tell a DOCTOR and figure out a way to reverse this because I feel KIND OF LIKE MY PRIVACY IS BEING INVADED HERE, please leave me alone and don't talk to me --
C.B.: You definitely cannot tell a medical professional about this! Everyone outside of the two of us needs to think that everything is fine!
BRIDDEY: OK, I won't tell anyone, but let me repeat once more: please leave me alone and don't talk to me or listen to my thoughts!
C.B.: I've been listening to your thoughts and I can tell you're in trouble, I'm here to pick you up from the hospital and drive you home! Want to tell me your address? LOL though I mean I already know it, you can have no secrets from me!

Yeah, this is kind of nightmare territory. For the next several chapters, Briddey freaks out while C.B. consistently refuses to stop invading her mental privacy, warns her that she can under no circumstances tell anybody else the truth about anything in her life or the fact that she is in distress, literally feeds her lies to tell to her family and boyfriend, shows up frequently to rescue her despite being explicitly asked not to do so, and, to add insult to injury, constantly mansplains random facts to her about telepathy.

C.B., of course, is the romantic hero and the book goes on to justify everything he does in every respect. The more the book went on, the more I missed Bennett from Bellwether. He had no particular personality that I can recall except being mysteriously immune to fads, but at least he seemed like a pleasant human being and I expect he understood the general meaning of the word 'no.'

It turns out C.B.'s Big Secret is that he has been generally telepathic since he was 13. Listening to everyone's thoughts has taught him that, I quote, "nice guys really do finish last. And nice girls. They get lied to and betrayed and stuck on somebody who's in love with somebody else and get their hearts broken."

Connie Willis! CONNIE WILLIS. THIS IS LITERALLY TEXTBOOK.

Anyway, this means that C.B. OF COURSE is the only person who can teach Briddey how to control her increasingly terrifying and generalized telepathy, and OF COURSE he has to come rescue her from being completely overwhelmed by the voices, and OF COURSE all Briddey has to do is trust him blindly, and OF COURSE after about 12 hours of clinging to him as her only rock in an unstable world full of shouting telepathic voices which she can't tell anyone else about, because he's repeatedly told her she can't tell or trust anyone else, Briddey realizes that ACTUALLY she's been in love with C.B. all along because of the kind, selfless way he keeps coming to her rescue and helping her! Of course. OF COURSE.

BRIDDEY: Oh, by the way, do you know why we are telepathic when nobody else is?
C.B.: In fact I am 100% rock-solid certain, based on a set of random historical anecdotes I've looked up, that telepathy is genetically Irish.
BRIDDEY: You mean ... the more Irish you are, the more telepathic you are?
C.B.: Yes, that is exactly what I mean! Nobody else is telepathic. Only the Irish. There is a special Irish telepathy gene and we literally magical Irish people have it.
BRIDDEY: Um.....
C.B.: The English, for the record, are, I have determined, especially un-telepathic.

I ... need help reacting to this.

In the final two hundred pages, it turns out that Briddey's initial operation was all an evil plot on behalf of Trent and the cell phone company to figure out how to tap telepathy for the next great leap forward in cell phone devices! Because cell phones, if you missed the memo, are the worst.

Briddey and C.B., meanwhile, are absolutely determined that no one EVER should find out that telepathy is real or use any actual science to study it, despite telepathic people actually popping up left and right and going nearly off the deep end with hearing voices that they can't control. People finding out the truth would be the worst thing in the world! Much better to continue lying to everyone for the sake of convenience!

In order to preserve this secret, Briddey takes her one major act of agency in a book full of hiding, freaking out and being rescued by C.B.: she deliberately opens her mind to five million telepathic voices and a panic attack, in order to also burn out the two people who are listening in on her telepathically to prove telepathy is real. But since C.B. also has to come rescue her from the consequences of this, I don't know how many points I'm giving Connie Willis on that one either.

Eventually C.B. handwavily figures out a way to switch off telepathy, and then Briddey's genius niece handwavily figures out a way to switch telepathy back on but only for some people? I guess?? It's very unclear??? The moral being that communication is OK if it's with your true love, I guess, for a very given value of true love. But lying to everyone else is still definitely the best plan.

(Despite the total nonsense of the 'IRISH PEOPLE HAVE A TELEPATHY GENE' premise, I did laugh at the literally last-two-pages reveal that not only is Briddey's aunt telepathic also, but Briddey's aunt's entire Daughters of Ireland social club of elderly Irish ladies are IN FACT a telepathic vigilante squad working to keep the secret of the Irish telepathy gene safe. On the other hand, the fact that Briddey's aunt is in fact telepathic and C.B. knew it all along renders the entire 'you must definitely lie to all your friends and family about your current major trauma' thing even MORE ridiculous and unnecessary, and NEVERMIND, NOW I'M MAD AGAIN.)