So given that I didn’t know John Green was a thing until about 2015, it’s funny to me for John Green’s brother to also be as much of a thing. In certain worlds, at least.
In some ways this does read like, what if John Green wrote a book solely for adults. But also, I think this book is a lot of fun and better than it probably has any right to be, and really smart at various times.
In it, April May is leaving work at a kind of soulless design job in Manhattan at 3am, when she walks by what she assumes is street art, a giant robotic samurai figure. She glances at it, admires it in passing, and goes along her way. She doubles-back a minutes later thinking that she owes it some appreciation as a fellow artist and when she goes back to it and touches it, she has a moment of epiphany and calls her friend to make a short video fake interviewing the statue. This video takes off virally because what it occurs to people watching is that some 60 other identical and identically impossible versions of this statue have shown up inexplicably around the world.
April May becomes a viral star and also taps into the mystery at the center of the statues, a set of clues and mysteries that show up in opaque radio frequencies and even shared dreams unveiling more and more parts of a puzzle. And so her with viral fame comes the trappings of celebrity.
This book, certainly to be followed by a sequel feels a lot like a few others (in mostly good ways): Ender’s Game, Ready Player One, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and even Black Mirror.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-Remarkable-Thing-Novel/dp/1524743461/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=an+absolutely&qid=1574610645&sr=8-1)