Nikesh Shuklar's novel Meatspace perfectly captures the paranoia and angst that lurks beneath the witty banter of today's social media age. For anyone whose first and last thought of the day is to check their social media feeds this is an 'M.R.' - must read.
Like Tao Lin's novel Taipei, the novel is set in a contemporary social media obsessed world, in this case London, in which hours/days are idled away with a cultural digest of celebrity gossip, vacuous live tweeting and pornography, heightening the anxiety that there is little time for actual work never mind a fulfilling career.
Where the book succeeds is in exploring the extremes of digital anxiety where the edges of identity and relationships blur in to a dubious area where the nature of 'friends' and 'likes' is seriously questioned.
The novel's protagonist Kitab first finds his twitter account has been hacked before discovering that his complete identity has been hijacked. The way 'Kitab 2' conducts a complete and total identity takeover is dangerously simple and sobering (to this reader at least).
Less successful are the chapters concerning Aziz in New York if only because the Kitab/Kitab 2 story is so strong. Something about the claustrophobia of one man's loss of identity is lost in these sections however, the end result delivers.
The themes of paranoia and personality disorder may sound a little Bret Easton Ellis but what Shuklar actually does with Meatspace is create a unique and compelling story that packs a zeitgeisty punch that will leave you with a serious urge to change your passwords as a matter of urgency.
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