Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow #
Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow (audio). My first time reading (or listening) to fiction by Doctorow, whose nonfiction I’ve been reading for a long time, mostly via his blog. Tribes that are oriented around syncing circadian rhythms across borders have formed. The protagonist Art is a member of Eastern Standard Tribe, but works in London as a UX designer selling intentionally bad designs to undermine that tribe. The story alternates between his viewpoint in an asylum (told in the first person) and the path that led him there (told in the third person) in an interesting way, and the entire novel ends with the line “you know, you belong in a looney bin”. I enjoyed this story-telling device, but the book as a whole did not have a super strong impact; possibly because it was written in 2004, and so both it and the future it imagines are slightly dated. Grade: B+