SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: January 26, 2022] Fixer
I saw this book at work and was attracted by the cover (obviously San Francisco) and that it was about a tech startup company (sort of).
The book is set up with each chapter being about one of the five main characters.
Meghan is a single woman whose life has been one of upheaval. As we meet her, she has just gotten laid off (with about one third of the firm) of a tech company that has had to resize itself. She’s not even sure why she works in marketing–she has no real sense of self and would love to be an artist. But she doesn’t dare risk things for that. She has also just had a very good date with Diego Garcia.
Diego (Digs) is techie guy with great ideas. He has been working in the tech field for many years and has brought some of his good college friends to work with his at Del Oro, a startup tech firm with one of the hottest apps out right now.
Kari (he is Norwegian) is Diego’s college friend. They have been close as anything for many years. Kari (and his father especially) have very high expectations for Kari. Kari is the more business minded side of Diego–he knows about money and how to get it. He is passionate about very few things. One is success. The other is Kari.
Kira (the similar names are cute, rather than cloying, I think) is his girlfriend of many years. She is possibly more driven than he is. She is very successful and expects the best from everyone. She has known Kari and Diego since college. She likes Diego but gets a little tired of him. When Diego starts dating Meghan, she finds her unbearably boring.
The last of their college friends is Ravi. Ravi is gay, but he has not (and could never) come out to his strict Indian parents (who are back in India). They would love for him to come home, but he has made a life for himself here. He is actually just about to get married to a woman. She is his best friend (they’ve known each other forever) and she is a lesbian. She also needs help with her visa to stay in the country. It solves everything. Even their serious significant others are on board. Ravi is very close to Kari as well. His boyfriend is serious and they imagine settling down someday is gay marriage is ever legalized.
That last thing is an interesting sticking point. I feel like the book is set after gay marriage has been legalized (because of the tech). But she never mentions any dates, so I’ll assume she knows what she’s talking about.
What I thought was really fun about the book is that there’s not really a plot to speak of as it starts. There’s twenty or so pages about each character–with a lovingly rendered back story and lots of details about their private lives and thoughts. The only really plot so to speak is Kari and Diego’s desire to start their own company.
What’s also fun though is that the plot that is generates moves forward regardless of which character is the “focus” of the chapter. So in a chapter about Kira, we learn how she feels that Kari is working more because his project was successful.
About mid way through the book things start to happen. Diego and Kari abandon Del Oro and decide to start their own business. They have an idea for an app that knows you so well it can actually make decisions for you (about purchasing and dating and even playing video games, if you want you character to log more hours, but don’t have the time).
But as the start up moves forward, relationships are strained. Some break, some bend, and soon enough everyone has left Del Oro for other prospects (unbelievably, Meghan is laid off again).
What I thought was especially exciting about the story was that in the tech startup world failure is more common than success, so you always have this concern about whether or not their app can actually succeed.
There is one major catastrophe for on of the characters and I was a little angry that there was no follow up on it. It was probably believable, but it just came out nowhere and rather freaked me out.
We also seem a couple reunite. And….Meghan goes to Burning Man.
It’s possible that some readers may hate these characters–young, successful (the amount of name dropping of brands/flavors of coffee is crazy). Plus, the culture of San Francisco is very (almost smugly) detailed. And then there’s the depth of information on Burning Man. None of these things bothered me, but I could easily see some readers getting turned off by these details. I actually loved reading about Burning Man because I never knew exactly what it was all about.
The final thought is that the app that they create seems, to me, to be terrible. Don’t get me wrong, I can see its benefits and uses (I wonder how much Vedros had to think about getting this app so fully realized), but it seems outrageously invasive to me.
The ending is interesting in its own way. Certainly not what I expected–it’s a little weird but it is a surprisingly good way to wrap things up.
But overall, I enjoyed the character development and the way that Vedros wrote. The book isn’t funny but there is humor. The book is techie, but not overwhelmingly so. And all of the characters are flawed in some way, which just makes you wish for success for them.
I believe this is Vedros’ first book. It’s very og
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