I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: August 2023] An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Unlike apparently everyone in the world, I had no idea who Hank Green was when I started this book.  This came recommended to me by Chirp as a fun read an the plot sounded good so I gave it a try.

When I told my kids about it they knew who Hank Green was (they knew him and his brother rom Crash Course).  I also didn’t know who is brother was.  Well, that’s not true, I had heard of John Green but didn’t know they were brothers and I’ve not actually read anything by John.  So, no expectations.

I was immediately hooked by the narrator of the audiobook, Kristen Sieh. I had no idea who she was either (evidently she’s in a ton of things as well as doing audio books).  There was something about the vulnerability she gave to the main character April May, that I just couldn’t stop listening.

So the premise is fairly straightforward.  Except for the way the narrative is structured.  The story is told as if it were all true and the reader knows what happened already.  She is telling a kind of personal version of monumental events.  She even talks about the day she died.  So, what?

But aside from that the story is simple.  April May is an art student who is working a crap job in New York City.  She is heading home later one night when she notices a giant statue in the middle of the sidewalk.  She is about to pass it by, but she decides to call her friend Andy, a fellow art student and filmmaker, to come and film this thing.  He does and they make a goofy video which the post to YouTube.

In the video, April talks about this robot which she calls Carl and asks Andy (as if he is a passerby, what he thinks about this.

It’s all weird and who even know where this thing came from–is it an ad for a movie or what?  They put the video up and laugh about it.

The next day they discover that there are actually 64 Carls planted in nearly every major city around the world.  But because April’s was the first video about it, she becomes a kind of viral lightning rod.   A scientist, Miranda, reaches out to her and tells her that the properties she describes about Carl (not giving off heat, but being very dense, etc) are not physically possible.  I loved Sieh’s voice for Miranda as well–wide-eyed but confident.  Miranda, April and Andy start to work together on a little puzzle that they seem to have uncovered.

It turns out that when the Carls landed, any video that showed them arrive was disrupted by static and the sound of Don’t Stop Me Now, by Queen.  When April looks up the song on Wikipedia, she tries to make some corrections to the entry, but every time she does, new errors pop up.  Miranda figures out what the errors are spelling and they quickly hatch a hair brained plan.

Miranda believes that Carl is asking for elements.  So when April is out in California for a TV show (she has become media famous in the last couple of weeks), they give these elements to Carl.  And Carl reacts.  It’s the first time that Carl has reacted to anything.  And while they have given the elements to Hollywood Carl, the way Carl reacts happens almost identically to all of the other Carls as well.

That night, April has a dream.  She is in an office and there’s a robot there who asks for a passcode.  When she doesn’t have it, she wakes up.  She continues to have the dream but she explores a bit more.  And after a couple of days she mentions the dream to Andy and Miranda and they all admit that they have been having the dream too.  In fact, lots of people have and there’s a Wikipedia page devoted to what people are finding.

All of this goes to convince April tat she is right: the Carls have come to earth to get humanity to work together to achieve something.  She is unfailingly positive about it and every  new video message bolsters that positivity.  Soon, she is one of the most popular figures in the world, with a huge following on Twitter, YouTube and elsewhere.  She gets an agent (Andy’s father is a lawyer) and a personal assistant (Robin, about whom I wish we knew more) and even a nemesis.

Because of course, there’s a fear mongering bigot who has come to shit on everything.  Peter Petrawicki immediately published a 20 page ebook screed about the Carls saying that they were clearly a threat and an invading force. And soon, April and Peter are sparring online.  April doesn’t want to give them legitimacy but she can’t help it when his group (The Defenders) start gaining in popularity.  And becoming more threatening.

I really enjoyed Aprils tone throughout.  She made me laugh.  She was dumb and admitted it.  But she had the best intentions all the time.  AS the book nears the end she makes some really dumb decisions and the end is a cliffhanger.

When I listened to thebook I had no idea it came out in 2018.  The sequel has been out for three years already, but I’m waiting for until I can get it from the library or Chirp to listen to it.

My only real complaint is with the title.  It is a terrible title.  very hard to remember and vaguely nonsensical.  But aside from that I couldn’t put the book down.