Book Review: Goodbye for Now
Goodbye for Now
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: August 7, 2012
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Sam Elling works for an internet dating company, but he still can’t get a date. So he creates an algorithm to match people with their soul mates. The technology fixes Sam up with Meredith, his perfect match, but it also gets him fired when the company starts losing all its customers as they quickly find Mr. and Mrs. Right.
When Meredith’s grandmother, Livvie, dies suddenly, Sam creates a computer simulation of her from her correspondence – e-mail, Facebook, video chats, texts – so Meredith can say goodbye. Meredith loves her virtual Livvie, and the couple launches a business to help others through their grief. But as the business takes off, their undertaking proves more complicated than anyone imagined. For every person who just wants to say goodbye, someone else can’t let go. Meanwhile, Sam and Meredith’s affection for each other deepens into a love neither can live without. But what if one of them suddenly had to?
This book is both hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. Frankel has a crisp writing style and wonderful sense of humor and irony. If it wasn’t for the dark, dry humor this would be an awfully depressing book. It is pretty much all about death and grieving after all.
Goodbye For Now raises so many thought-provoking questions in today’s social media age. Is chatting and emailing with a DLO (Departed Loved One) that much different from having purely electronic relationships with living people? Should RePose be used just for the short-term as a crutch in the grieving process? Or should it be used long-term as a means of honoring the DLO’s memory? Is using it long-term just prolonging the denial stage of grief – perhaps forever?
I’m not sure of the answer to any of these questions but I do know that I enjoyed this book immensely.
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(I received a copy of this book courtesy of the publisher and The LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)
