Life through lens of a teen humanoid
A tale to keep you guessing
Getting into the head of a teenager is nigh on impossible as a parent, let alone as an author. But Sarah Epstein, in Deep Water, has produced a mystery that is just as much about teenagers coming to grips with their parents' failures as it is about the mysterious disappearance of a young boy. Deep Water unravels the disturbing loss of 13-year-old Henry Weaver, while laying out the struggle of teenagers trying to reconcile the world their flawed parents have shown them with the realities of the world that exists beyond the four walls of their homes.
Chloe Baxter is the product of a broken home, shuffled between her life with her mother in Sydney and her father in the New South Wales highlands and the town in which she was born. Her friends are here and her life was here – until her mother's affair. Home for the school holidays, she is determined to learn the whereabouts of her friend Henry, who disappeared on the night of a terrific storm three months ago and is thought to have run away.
As Chloe probes the mystery, she questions the motives of those closest to her. She and her friends jump to erroneous conclusions and act on their own errors to complicate things even further.
Deep Water follows the story from differing perspectives and manages the balancing act between keeping the reader in the space between knowing something is up and getting impatient on the path to find out what that is.
As we follow Chloe's story, we also see her from the point of view of others; a process that is surely part of the adolescent struggle of reconciling the chasm between childhood and adulthood.
The young adult audience for whom Epstein is writing will find much to admire in Chloe – as well as behaviour to disdain. Although the many, many books in this genre tell us that Henry's disappearance is not a simple affair, we are kept guessing about his fate until the end.
Behaviour of the combatants and events along the way that seem to have no purpose neatly leads to the answers and add facets to the characters in a young adult novel that is also satisfying for older readers.
In spite of ambitions to be a composer/quantum physicist/ geneticist/ knower of everything knowable, Pamela Morrow (Nga¯ti Pu) is a part-time visual effects artist and part-time writer.
Her first publication, Hello Strange, is a lively, entertaining young-adult novel, with stimulating nearfuture elements starring a humanoid. It also explores the ethics of computers in our lives and ways to process grief.
We asked Morrow some questions:
A few years ago, when I started exploring ideas for a romance novel, I came upon a clip of Actroid F, a very human-like, female robot made around 2010. It was like technology from some remote outpost of the future had catapulted into my present. My newfound robot obsession gave me Josie.
What I loved about writing Josie is how the teenage experience corrupts her textbook idea of what it means to be young and human. We’re a mess of misunderstandings and contradictions at any age and she’s every moment of frustration I’ve had with a computer: a little crashy and vulnerable to hacking, but mindbending and awesome all the same.
Facetime! I grew up on The Jetsons and the idea of seeing the person you are calling on the ‘phone’ was so futuristic, but also held great potential for embarrassment. I mean, what if you were in your pajamas and someone called you?
My family tease me for my tendency to talk in a shouty voice and hog the camera.
Another invention straight out of science fiction is my Apple watch. Every time I take a call on it, I’m channelling Star Trek.
I love researching, so thinking about what school might be like in the future was especially fun. I like the idea of ‘school’ being a community hub: educational, individuality focused, holistic, entrepreneurial, and set in a productive green space. My favourite elements are the school bathroom that talks and the smart-glass, domed music department. When my character Hunter wanders into the dome, it fires up with a colourful, splashy visual display triggered by falling raindrops and accompanied by the timeless twang of an electric guitar.
I worry about the robot/AI human replacements we have already. I prefer talking to a human on the phone, not an algorithm. And who isn’t suspicious of Google advertising, when it matches something we’ve mentioned while not even on a phone call?
Drone warfare is terrifying. Remote control surgery is my worst nightmare (even if it improves someone else’s life). However, I would be happy to hand over cooking duties to a Robochef, as long as they clean up after themselves and don’t break the glassware.
My novel is as cautionary about humans as it is about the dangers of technology. You have your good humans, and your not so good humans.
I’d like to say no, I really would. But the antics of my 18 year old are a lot like the antics when I was an 18 year old. So I’m inclined to answer yes.
The next book tackles live entertainment in the near future and our appetite for the spectacular.