Grab the Lapels

Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams

I believe Tell the Machine Goodnight is billed as science fiction, but Katie Williams’s novel is more science fiction in the way that Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson is science fiction. Basically, one main element involves futuristic technology — in the case of the Williams novel it is a machine that gives you a contentment plan based on a DNA sample — while the rest feels familiar, though the people are all just a tiny bit odd, dare I say quirky.

The Apricity, a machine named after the archaic word, apricity, meaning “the feeling of sun on one’s skin in the winter.” Pearl is a technician who swabs a client’s cheek and gets a read out from The Apricity describing what will make the customer happy with nearly 100% accuracy. It may be to buy a dog. It may be cut off the tip of your finger. Pearl’s got the manual memorized and easily responds to questions with a pre-approved statement. Meanwhile, at home, Pearl’s son has just returned from an institution where he was placed because he won’t eat, and her ex-husband is married to a woman with pink hair who is half his age.

At first, Tell the Machine Goodnight seems like a book about a woman preaching technologically-proven happiness while suffering in silence at home. To put on a happy, professional face each day and then stare her starving son right in the eyes every night. But it’s not that. Indeed, Williams comes out of left field and takes readers on a map-free journey. The narration moves from Pearl’s point of view to her son’s, and then to her boss’s and eventually her ex-husband’s wife. We end up with a movie star known for her famous scream in horror movies and back to Pearl again and again.

I want to say that readers join each character so we can basically learn that everyone is miserable and seeking happiness, but that’s not true. Tell the Machine Goodnight is not a preachy book with canned answers, like Pearl’s work manual. I could say it’s more about getting to know different people, where they’ve been and how they got where they are. But that’s not true for each shift in point of view, either.

Sometimes a character is deceived, or they reveal they like being endangered, or, in the case of the ex-husband, we learn that his family is wealthy, which affords him a career as an experimental artist, whether he makes money or not. In his latest “installation” at a gallery, he enacts answers people actually get from The Apricity, but take it to the extreme. The machine says one person should eat some honey to be happy? The ex-husband eats five jars until throws up, for an audience. But one thing remains true: every character’s story has The Apricity in it.

In another chapter, Pearl’s son helps a girl from his tiny private school figure out who recorded her, inebriated, doing embarrassing things. The story reads almost like a Harriet the Spy for teens, novel, and the connection is that the boy refuses to use The Apricity, either to help his friend recover from her humiliating video or to help his mom figure out why he won’t eat.

In a way, Katie Williams’s novel is more like an interconnected short story collection in which the same characters who narrated one story appear in the background later. If that’s your sort of thing (it is mine), then Tell the Machine Goodnight is highly recommended to you.

Published by Grab the Lapels

I'm a graduate of the MFA fiction writing program at the University of Notre Dame, which inspired me to follow along with trends in teaching, publishing, and reviewing. I also have an MA and BS from Central Michigan University. I used to teach composition, creative writing, and literature in higher education, then did a brief stint at a civic theater, followed by two years at a references desk at a public library. I'm now working toward my ASL Interpreter license.

24 comments

  1. They do seem like interconnected short stories, except that I kept expecting the story of Pearl and her son to get somewhere, for one of them to arrive at some kind of conclusion that illuminated the rest of the stories.

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  2. The book sounds great, though my TBR is so long I am not likely to ever read it. Still I am glad to know it is there! Even better, however, thank you for giving me a new word! I have plenty of opportunity for using apricity, though today won’t be one of them since it is cloudy. But I am so happy to have a word for the feeling now!

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    • I definitely think “apricity” is a word that applies to you, Stefanie! It may also apply to your chickens and plants, too. I hear you about the long TBR. Lately, I’ve become even more picky about what I add, knowing that I will likely delete a book that strikes me only for a moment now in 2-3 years.

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  3. I like the premise but it sounds sad – and Jeanne’s comment makes me think that there’s no resolution at hand. Which there doesn’t have to be, but sometimes I want there to be for characters who are suffering. Maybe as a mom of a tween boy, the notion of not being able to help my son with something that huge seems too emotional for me to read about.

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  4. This sounds interesting. I thought at first it was more like a novel that focused on different characters in different sections. Does it feel cohesive as a whole or really more like short stories?

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    • Both, which sounds like I’m being wishy washy. You get different perspectives, but because each character is so different, and their perspective is a contained scene, it feels like short stories AND a whole novel. I was surprised. Nick and I were worried it was going to be all about an eating disorder. It’s not.

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  5. I like the sound of this one too, and no doubt it reads more like a short story collection. It’s just such a fantastic idea, this machine that can tell you how to become happy. Does it deal with the moral issues i.e. what if the machine told you that murdering someone in your life would make you happy?

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  6. I must read this book! Of course it is SF, SF goes off in all sorts of strange directions. Sounds a little like Sheckley’s Can you Feel Anything when I do This? about a vacuum cleaner giving sexual massages.

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    • Well, of course I had to Google that. I see that it is a short story collection, and several were originally published in Playboy. I’m still surprised that some of the best short story writers out there were established in Playboy, and that it is (was?) a mark of success to be accepted into such a magazine. I mean, when did The Heff decide to go literary??

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  7. This book sounds very much like something I would enjoy. Thanks for the review. Also saw this and thought of ye. Apparently there is a podcast called Double Love, where two Irish women recap the Sweet Valley series, book by book. I have never got into the podcast thing but I have three I might try to see if I like them.
    x The Captain

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  8. So glad you (your Lowdown, I mean) reminded me to come check out this review as this is the sort of SF I like to read. As Stefanie says, I loved learning a new word, apricity, and I usually enjoy connected short stories. The can be the best of both worlds often – the tightness of the short story but some sense of character continuity. It also makes some of the storms easier because you already know some of the characters (le they don’t need to be established from scratch.)

    That was a great question about what wold the machine do if what would make you happy was doing something bad.

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    • It does feel like short stories, though it is really a novel, I suppose. It’s right on the line. I’ve only read a few connected short story collections, and mostly those are due to place, like a neighborhood or cul-de-sac. Williams’s novel reminds me more of a writer having a bunch of paper dolls that she moves around and makes talk, and then she sets one down because her hands are full and another doll has its own adventure. But, we come back to the dolls that get laid down.

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      • Haha, love the paper doll analogy.

        You are right that most of the connected short stories I’ve read have been place focused – though some have been a whole (small) town, not just neighbourhood. The first one though that I recollect coming across was set in an apartment complex in Mumbai. I started reading it at my brother’s and didn’t finish it, but I was enjoying it. (Tales From Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry). I think some work better as “novels” while others really are short story collections with loose links. I think some are clearly one way or another, while some are borderline as you seem to feel this one is. One I’ve reviewed is Murmurations, and that seemed to have an overall narrative arc, which tipped it over into the novel (novella I think) category.

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  9. The premise sounds very interesting (and I love the word “apricity”!), though often these novels that are more like interconnected short stories don’t work so well for me. Beyond The Apricity appearing in every chapter, how much connection would you say there is between the stories?

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    • The chapters switch POV, so if the first chapter is from the mom’s point of view and her son is in the chapter, the next chapter is about the son and his experiences with a friend. He doesn’t rehash the mom’s story from a different view point, he lets readers into his life. In another chapter, we get the POV of a man the mom works with, so it’s focused on him, but she does appear in the chapter. Then, the mom will have her own chapter again with a different character, a client or her ex-husband, and then we’ll get a chapter from the POV of the ex-husband, etc. I would say it’s highly connected, though the switch in POV that doesn’t merely look at the same scene from a different angle is what gives it the feel of short stories. I think you’l like it, Lou.

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