Elaine Castillo\u2019s second novel is set within the rotten heart of the US tech industry, where \u201cGirlie was, by every conceivable metric, one of the very best.\u201d What makes her so effective in her underpaid contract role moderating content for social media giant Reeden is that most prized of workplace currencies: a stoical capacity for labour. Though the job\u2019s mental toll is clear \u2013 suicides are common, white staff never stick around and wellness support remains superficial \u2013 Girlie proves exceptionally hardy, near-perfect in her ability to identify and scrape feeds free of child sexual abuse content. Behind her productive impassivity, Castillo tells us with a sombre touch of irony, is a \u201cglowing\u201d line of ancestors \u2013 Filipina nurses and maids who have long cleaned up after others.<\/p>\n
Things look up for Girlie once William Cheung enters the scene, inviting her to become a moderator at Playground, a virtual reality entertainment platform newly acquired by Reeden. Girlie is a perfect fit. As the American-born daughter of immigrants, she carries a cloying sense of filial indebtedness (\u201cthere was an unspoken understanding, an ironclad cultural code: if you made money, you had to pay your family back\u201d). With the family home under mortgage, the generous benefits package is hard to resist. And, because we\u2019re partly also in romance territory, so is the man offering it.<\/p>\n
Castillo\u2019s celebrated debut, America is Not the Heart<\/a>, was centred on the Filipino experience in 90s America. Peopled with nurses, doctors, faith healers, makeup artists, restaurateurs and DJs shifting languages between Ilocano, Tagalog and Pangasinan, the book opened a window on to a shadowed corner of American life, but refused to trade on trauma (\u201cthe gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic\u201d, Castillo calls it in her essay collection, How To Read Now). Instead, it honoured quiet, quotidian expressions of community and survival. But where that first novel could lean into self-seriousness, weighed down by the familiar solemnities of the immigrant story, Moderation has more fun within the genre \u2013 even if of a masochistic kind (\u201cParents worked all the time \u2026 Never been on vacation with my family,\u201d Girlie says at one point. \u201cNever been to Disneyland either\u201d).<\/p>\n Castillo cannily frames VR\u2019s healing power within a darker tale of its co-option for profit, control and surveillance<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The book\u2019s twinned look at labour and immigration all but guarantees comparisons to Ling Ma\u2019s 2018 novel, Severance. But Girlie, unlike the Chinese-born protagonist of the latter work, is not haunted by memories of a distant homeland; her only longing is for her childhood home in Milpitas, lost in the 2008 market crash. The books\u2019 true kinship may lie in the fact that they both unfold against a backdrop of collapse: where Ma imagined a fungal pandemic, Castillo envisions a looming digital end time.<\/p>\n Playground\u2019s journey, Girlie learns, began with a keen interest in the therapeutic space. The need for funding then led it to merge with L\u2019Olifant, a French theme park company showcasing \u201cFrench history to the French\u201d. Now, with Reeden as a shared parent, the two are poised to transform the worlds of entertainment and healthcare \u2013 at least in theory.<\/p>\n Castillo cannily frames VR\u2019s healing power \u2013 from treating PTSD and phobias to providing pain relief and easing suicidal thoughts \u2013 within a darker tale of its co-option for profit, control and surveillance. Castillo is interested in the overlap between rightwing politics, tech culture and historiography. L\u2019Olifant is modelled after historical French theme park company Puy du Fou, created by Philippe de Villiers, who is known for his Catholic, Eurosceptic and national sovereignty politics, and, in 2022, for backing the far-right candidate \u00c9ric Zemmour. Like Puy du Fou, L\u2019Olifant is on a mission to make history \u201cfun\u201d and \u201cexciting\u201d, even if it means ideologically rewriting it.<\/p>\n As the story unfolds, and therapeutic ideals, revisionist ambitions and corporate greed converge, Castillo has potent themes to work with: censorship, digital feudalism, the exploitation of biometric data for propaganda purposes, and the disturbing trade-off between principle and progress. Disappointingly, she seems more content to skim surfaces than probe depths. Her narratorial tactic of choice is to tell and tell \u2013 through flat expositional dialogue, but also the lazy shorthand of news headlines (\u201cPLAYGROUND\u2019S NEW VIRTUAL REALITY INITIATIVE: FAR-OUT FANTASY OR FAR-RIGHT NIGHTMARE?\u201d) \u2013 never showing, never dramatising. The characters, as a result, can feel like bystanders, idling on the tale\u2019s margins rather than actively inhabiting its centre. Girlie and William are interesting in their own right, but together, not exactly a match you\u2019d ship. This is because for pages on end, the supposed romance between the pair lies dormant, only for it to comically whip into life in sudden bursts of passion. The novel tries to straddle too many worlds at once \u2013 thriller, dystopia, second-generation immigrant account, love story \u2013 but commits wholeheartedly to none. The result is a narrative that feels more scattered than layered.<\/p>\n But Moderation is not without merits. Castillo is a writer of razor-sharp acuity who takes seriously the sinister instrumentalisation of storytelling, in a world increasingly veering right. As a novel of ideas, Moderation contains terror enough to keep you reading, and looking for signs of the nightmare its author has taken the time to document.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n