07/27/2015
In this novel, Shukla (Coconut Unlimited) skillfully guides readers on a journey through meatspace—the physical world of face-to-face interactions—and cyberworld. The novel follows young writer Kitab Balasubramanyam in his struggle to find happiness, new love, and human interaction among family and friends in a world where virtual and transient interactions abound. While Kitab’s brother, Aziz, flees England for the U.S. in search of his Internet doppelganger, Kitab stays in London to begin his second novel. When approached at a reading by a Facebook friend with the same name, Kitab must confront the thin line between the Internet and reality. What follows is a story of misplaced identity, virtual catastrophe, and unexpected connections. Throughout the novel, Shukla successfully replicates the 21st-century experience of existing online; the book is brimming with tweets, Facebook activity, comments sections, Google search histories, and chapter-long blog posts about Aziz’s U.S. adventures. In this culturally relevant novel, Shukla provides a peek into the hyperconnected and lonely world we inhabit. (Sept.)
‘Like Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, this novel capturesa cultural moment’– Guardian
‘An anarchic, self-involved and admirably honest portrait ofa bookish life lived in the brave new digital world’– New Statesman
‘Chilling’– Observer
‘Buzzing with streetwise smarts and satirical barbs, it’s athoughtful, often hilarious, meditation on a young writer’sloneliness in the digital age’– Independent on Sunday
‘Brilliant stuff ’– Londonist
‘Hilarious and disturbing’– Stylist
‘Meatspace is funny. Damn funny. Youshould really switch off your computer and read it’– Matt Haig, author of The Humans
‘Meatspace is the greatest book on loneliness since The Catcher in the Rye’– Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
‘Totally original and funny and humane’– Sathnam Sanghera, author of The Boy with The Topknot
‘Meatspace is, simply, one of the finest novels I have ever readabout modern life and modern living. DouglasCoupland, Junot Diaz, Chuck Palahniuk and Jennifer Egan:stick them in a blendr, and out comes this amazing new novelby one of the UK’s most distinct voices’– James Smythe, author of The Machine
‘Very funny and I’d recommend it to anyone’– Rick Edwards in the Metro
08/01/2015
Author, filmmaker, and noted podcaster Shukla's second novel (after Coconut Unlimited, which was short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award) revolves around a writer's plight following his first novel; thus, it is boldly self-referential. This works because the novel's context, the individual's relationship with social media, is rooted in self-contextualization. The narrative alternates between the writer Kitab's struggles and his brother Aziz's blog, with Kitab's section quickly unfolding into a nightmare of identity theft; a person with his same exact name, Kitab Balasubramanyam, appears in the flesh demanding to be Facebook friends. Meanwhile, Aziz's story diverges into a trip to New York featuring superhero adventures. As Kitab struggles with his doppelgänger, dubbed Kitab 2, he comes to appreciate the vulnerability of his skillfully crafted social media persona in contrast to the truths of reality, aka "Meatspace." Aziz's blogged adventures and the comments they engender provide an antic counterpoint. VERDICT This novel makes a powerful statement about the plasticity of social networking using the medium of social networking, knitting together the two narratives and binding them in an unexpected crescendo that is wonderfully effective. It's Dave Eggers's The Circle meets Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley; highly recommended for those who are now checking their phone for updates. [See Prepub Alert, 3/9/15.]—Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos Lib., CA
2015-06-30
Doubles and dramatic stylistic shifts abound in this novel about a young writer's misadventures in romance, with his family, and on social media. Kitab Balasubramanyam, the narrator of Shukla's (largely) comic and self-aware novel, is a writer with a number of problems: his brother, Aziz, has decamped for an adventure in New York; his father is bothering him for dating advice; and a young man who shares his name has entered his life, sometimes endearingly clueless, sometimes appearing to be a terrifying stalker. Interspersed with Kitab's story are Aziz's adventures, which take on a very different tone. Literary references abound, including Will Self and Martin Amis, as well as Kitab's favorite book, which is strongly implied to be Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. These are all books that a young, edgy writer would likely embrace, but they're also there for more metafictional reasons. Palahniuk's penchant for unreliable narrators, Self's games in worldbuilding, and Amis' fondness for ambiguity—think, especially, of Money—can all be seen as stylistic antecedents for what Shukla is doing here. And given the array of doubles and doppelgängers, and a meditation on the difference between online identities and our identities in the physical world (hence the novel's title), Shukla leaves the reader with plenty to ponder. Shukla does a good job of making both the object of Kitab's affection and his ex-girlfriend characters with their own lives and concerns; this is a novel that shows, but does not share, its narrator's anxieties. Less successful is the prefacing of all of Kitab's chapters with his Internet search history. It's an amusing touch but one that never gets inside his head the way the rest of the novel does. Literary and well aware of it, Shukla's novel is a charming, sometimes-satirical take on the narratives we create about ourselves and those around us.
