3.5 stars. Set in the far future where humans live side by side with artificial intelligent beings called ‘hums’, May is struggling financially. She decides to undergo an operation where she rents out her face for a huge sum of money, but what she does with the money only brings her and her family grief the more desperately she tries to seek happiness.

I enjoyed the concept and the writing was really addictive. It was a very light sci fi in that although it was set in a world very different to ours, the concepts were easy to grasp and the story easy to follow, so it feels like a good sci fi to read if you want to dip your toes into the genre.

I felt a bit disappointed that some of the threads weren’t explored to the end, such as the whole ‘renting out your face’ thing, the children’s weird change in behaviour left unexplained and also the very abrupt ending. It partly felt like it was an idea being explored rather than a fully fleshed out plot and novel. But I still had a good time reading it and would recommend if you want a very gripping but short sci fi book.

<center><i>Thanks Atlantic Books and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.</i></center>

Actual rating: 3.75 stars.

When May loses her job to AI and struggles to find another, she becomes a guinea pig in a new experimental procedure, altering her face so it cannot be recognised by the surveillance that is now rampant. In turn, she is paid handsomely and can secure her family's future for another few months. May lives in a city that's been transformed by climate change and now shares its population with robots called 'hums'. The hums dispense pharmacy prescriptions, track your whereabouts, advertise to you every 15 minutes according to your surveilled condition, and far more.

Fraught with anxiety and stress, May splurges some of her newly earned cash on prestigious passes to the Botanical Garden: a rare, green refuge where forests, animals, streams and nature still flourish. Hardened by her family addiction to their devices, she decides to take her husband, daughter and son to the Garden without their devices, a decision that proves far riskier than anticipated. And, when her children come under threat thanks to her rash actions, May must put her trust in a hum.

I really enjoyed this speculative fiction from Phillips. AI and climate change are subjects I am incredibly interested in and passionate about, and they serve as a great backdrop to this story about motherhood, humanity, society and marriage. The distant-future dystopia felt dizzyingly real, and there's some excellent topics at play here. We must interrogate what happens when AI, climate change, tribalism and egocentricity are left to their own devices.

I read this book in days and thoroughly enjoyed it – I enjoyed the urgent prose that pulls you into May's mind and the childlike innocence of that of May's children. Somehow, it worked that you never learn much about her husband. I do wish there was a little more depth to the characters, and perhaps more world-building about life outside of the family's world. Perhaps that would've lifted this to a 4-star read.

May is bringing up her two children in a hot, polluted city after the forests of her childhood burnt, with her husband working in the gig economy as stable jobs are eroded by the advanced AI represented by the robot 'hums'. She is desperate to take them all to the Botanic Garden, an urban oasis that offers genuine interactions with nature away from electronic devices that constantly shower their users with ads (there's definitely something of the fantastic Black Mirror episode 'Fifteen Million Merits' in the world that Phillips imagines). Hum becomes compulsive because of how Phillips manages to make us feel the constant beat of May's pressure and guilt, even as her own attention is scattered by text alerts and hums who ask her to purchase more and more. When an attempt to discard devices makes things even worse, the novel tightens into an even more claustrophobic spiral. Hum didn't become quite as strange as I was hoping it would - the hallucinatory sequence in the Botanic Garden is its high point, and the novel becomes more familiar after the family leave the garden and we get a plot that's more about the very tired topic of cancel culture. But I liked the way Phillips wrote the eerie hums, who critique the system even as they spew advertisements, and Hum definitely manages to make a familiar near-future scenario feel fresh again, which is no small feat. Its haunting atmosphere reminded me a bit of Naomi Booth's excellent Sealed.

The best dystopian stories for me teeter so close to where we are now. They provoke and unsettle because they not only feel so possible, they are rooted in reality. Like The Handmaid’s Tale; inspired by and based on real events around the world, only twisted very subtly or sometimes not at all. We gasp and say “Thank God the world isn’t like that” only to see in the headlines the next day a woman murdered for not wearing the right item of clothing or incarcerated for making choices about their own body. In Hum, the inspiration comes from headlines relating to climate change, capitalism, social media, technological advancements, facial recognition software, Alexa, Google Glass, woven through a very identifiable story of a flawed mother (aren’t we all?) trying to do everything she can to protect her children from the impact of the changing world around her. Some reviewers have mentioned being put off by the ending. I thought it was genius. The endnotes are almost as enjoyable as the rest of the novel. And how grating are those adverts?! Brilliantly perceptive, horribly close.

Hum
By Helen Phillips

I had to sleep on this one to give myself time to process my feelings about it. On one hand, I was immediately invested in the dystopian setting, the stylish prose and the lurching sense of recognition at where we are heading, given the foreboding that some of my generation and older experience regarding the effects that technology and AI are manifesting in our children and grandchildren. Phillips had me in the palm of her hand with every loaded sentence, with every allusion to the insidiousness of advertising and how casually we relinquish our privacy, with her not so unimaginable world of homogeny and instant gratification, consumption and disempowerment, our eschewing of close personal contact for devices and AI.

I appreciate her hypothesis of future childhood, and that the irrepressible nature of children may dispel the notion that it's not worth bringing children into such a world, that where there's life, there's hope.

But then there's the ending. I am not a reader who demands a logical ending. I'm okay with ambiguity or unexpectedness, but sometimes, (and I'm still thick about Bobby Ewing's shower renaissance), sometimes an ending makes the reader feel swindled.

Until about 95% this was a 5 star read for me. On finishing it, it was a highly emotional and bitterly disappointed 2 stars. I just know that I will be thinking about elements of this story for years. Every time I grind my teeth over being denied access to a Web page or an app because I won't agree to their privacy or advertising rules, I will think about this book. Every time I see a baby in a pushchair glued to a device I will think about this book. Every time I look at a building development that was once a field or a woods I will think about this book. Every time I notice my decisions being influenced by how others might view me I will think of this book.

But that ending. Tut.

Publication date: 7th November 2024
Thanks to #NetGalley and #AtlanticBooks for providing an advance copy for review purposes

This is an engaging, dystopian story of parental love in a world of pervasive personal devices, surveillance and advertising, ravaged by the effects of climate change. At times it is disturbing, as it is so close to the bone; just a couple of small nudges away from our current reality.

“In a hot and gritty city populated by super-intelligent robots called 'Hums', May seeks some reprieve from recent hardships and from her family's addiction to their devices. She splurges on a weekend away at the Botanical Garden - a rare, green refuge in the heart of the city, where forests, streams and animals flourish.”

May and Jem have two young children, Lu and Sy, and the story revolves around May’s attempts to nurture them and keep them safe - desperately trying to provide them the rich experience that she had, detached from the omnipresent personal devices in her childhood world of greenery and forests that has long since burned. This is confounded by May and Jem’s lack of money: Jem is working in the gig economy, and May recently lost her job (taken by AI), and every step that May takes is monitored and judged by the ubiquitous devices and cameras.

The wheels quickly come off May’s world when her children go missing, and her desperate attempts to keep her family together spiral out of her control and into the hands of faceless bureaucracy and hopes of benevolence from the surveillance state.

The narrative has a slow, observational pace that I really liked, and that seemed to fit the mood perfectly - giving the story space to really show May’s place in the world, her relationship with Jem and the children, her hopes and desires. Lu and Sy are superbly observed as a 9 year old and her younger brother - their combinations of fun, cuddles, squabbles, laughter, innocence, imagination, petulance and love are perfectly drawn. May’s world revolves entirely around her family, and she has few friends and little interaction with other people. This gives a quite claustrophobic feel at times, but this really underscores the importance of their family bubble, and their isolation from society and the facelessness of bureaucracy.

Overall, a perceptive, unsettling but gentle observation of the impact of intrusive advertising, constant surveillance, personal devices, and the anonymous judgement of others.

Thank you #NetGalley and Atlantic Books for the free review copy of #HumBook in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Helen Philips does parental anxiety and dread like no one else. In a near future of seamlessly integrated advertising, unavoidable surveillance and declining natural environment, a mother tries to do something helpful for her family. The experimental procedure she undergoes provides a significant bump of funds but it disconnects her from her children. She splurges on a trip to a botanical garden for the family and, there, something goes wrong. She finds herself the center of public attention and threat. This is a story that seeks to imagine the future we are building so we can prepare ourselves for it. It's not without hope, but it's a world that will feed your anxieties. Of course, the role of horror and sci-fi is to give you a safe space to explore the ideas and emotions that you face in the real world. Philips presents a lot of big ideas here. Some are left unresolved, but that's OK - to her point in her epilogue, things are moving so quickly that the ideas might be moot in a year or two anyway. Just let the emotions wash over you and then go for a walk in your nearest woodland.

I liked this book, overall. I was drawn into the story and read it in only a few sittings. Another reviewer describes their ‘growing sense of disquiet’; I agree. I felt the tension increase, waiting for something to go horribly wrong.
The mum is a bit of a train wreck; she makes some really daft decisions. The kids are a bit irritating and obsessed with their devices. The dad wouldn’t win Parent of the Year, either. Some reviewers slated them all, but they just seemed pretty normal to me.
It’s easy to see parallels with how society is currently headed.
I liked the Hums that the book is named for; though I was left with a lot of questions about them.

A great book about family and love set in a big city in a near future. Due to climate change there’s hardly any nature left and the world has become even more capitalist and consists of even more technology. There are cameras everywhere, screens that provide you with the latest (mostly bad) news and intelligent robots called ‘hums’ have taken over many human jobs and tasks and keep bugging you with adds. People are even more obsessed with their phones than they are now, children have ‘bunnies’ on their wrists and every person has a personal ‘woom.’ Helen Phillips has built a world not so different from ours but with extras that may seem wonderful at first, but are they really? Not only a novel about technology, but also very much one about human connection, family, and parental love. Disturbing, gripping and unputdownable.
Thank you Atlantic and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

A deeply unsettling and disturbing novel, but in all the right ways. This is a book that will make you think and make you fearful, because it's all oh so believable.

Set in a near-future world, it's essentially the story of May Webb, as she struggle to cope in a society where her roles as employee, wife and mother are all being gradually supplanted by artificial intelligence bots.

As well as looking at the risks of AI, it also raises issues around identity, anonymity, climate change, environmental degradation, rampant consumerism, toxic media and the financial uncertainty of the gig economy. That's a lot of big concepts to cram into one book, and yet it's so skilfully done and so well-written that there's never any risk of the reader feeling overwhelmed by it all. The storyline is tightly focused on one family over the course of one week, so it's an incredibly intimate book. It's that sense of intimacy which magnifies how terrifyingly uncertain this future world is and how easy it might be to fall though the cracks when decisions are made by AI and not people

I devoured it in a single morning - I just couldn't put it down. An absolute must-read book for anyone who enjoys thought-provoking and suspenseful speculative fiction.

Helen Phillips writes disturbingly dystopian sci-fi, an artfully unsettling piece of speculative fiction, set in the near future, that is thought provoking and raises questions about the way we are currently living, the inequalities, technology, our closest relationships, marriage, family, being a mother, and our sense of identity. There is an underlying ominous tone in the complex, well constructed world building, a world that is chaotic, shattered by the effects of climate change. we have constant surveillance, the prevalence of 'hums', intelligent robots, contributing to May, losing her job working in AI, she has become superfluous to requirements. This leaves May with the burden of debt and a need to secure a way of making enough to live on, at least for a few months, for her struggling family, her husband Jem, and children Sy and Lu.

It is this that leads May into agreeing to an experimental procedure, key in a world dependent on facial recognition, altering her face sufficiently, rendering her unrecognisable to AI. However, there are to be repercussions to this that May does not see coming. Keen to provide some respite in this strained and smart AI consumer dominated environment for her family, May purchases a 3 day pass for the lush, green, Botanical Gardens in the city, primarily for the rich, leaving their devices at home. Here, everything starts to descend into a hellish nightmare as May's children come under horrifying threats. Feeling ever growing levels of stress, anxiety and tensions, May is pushed into having to trust a 'hum'.

Phillips manages to capture our contemporary zeitgeist, when the attention of so many are on their mobile devices, even when walking about on the streets, a constant unceasing hum. We live in a world where convenience is highly prized, delivered through improving technology, with few having the wit or desire to ask the pertinent questions, what is the price to be paid for all this? This is an intriguing and gripping read that resonates, touching on a litany of crucial and critical nerves when it comes to the way we live, unfortunately it does not feel in the least bit far fetched, no matter how much I wish it to be so. A compeling read that I recommend for all readers. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

A book about the future which feeds into the existentialist crisis of the present with the concerns over AI and the fear of what they may replace. The main protagonist - May - has lost her job due to AI and chooses to take a cosmetic opportunity to make some much-needed funds. As facets of her life and motherhood are replaced by Hums - AI Robots who do both the mundane and fulfilling parts of our lives - May uses her new-found funds to give her family a much-needed break from their reality. This leads to a number of family crises and May's life being irreparably changed.

I enjoyed the tale and some elements were really well developed and evocative, in particular the change in scenery and experience as the family go on their short holiday. I actually felt that the closing stages could have been further explored but it was an enjoyable read throughout. The children were incredibly annoying though so I felt more sympathy for May that perhaps her actions warranted.

This near-future story of a mother struggling to cope with a society under constant surveillance (your phone knows you're pregnant before you do) might sound like a cautionary tale, yet we now live in a very similar environment. This novel will appeal to a wide range of readers because it is so well written and wonderfully plotted.

Not what I expected

I would like to thank Atlantic Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of Hum by Helen Phillips.

Hum is a strange novel, odd even. It is about May, who loses her job to AI, and her complicated family life, motherhood and parenting. It is less about Hums (the A.I. robots). It is literary fiction, rather than science- or dystopian fiction. It was confusing at times, and it took me a while to get into the story.

With that in mind, I gave it 4 stars. Hum is by no means a bad novel, quite good actually, it’s just not what I expected from the blurb.

A near-future dystopian novel that is a liiiittle too close for comfort. I was really impressed by the writing, the book really drew me in and I read it fairly quickly, and even though nothing explicitly terrifying happens, it's filled with dread and suspense. I honestly found it more scary than a horror novel.
It also described motherhood in a way that I have never read before, which I thought was very interesting and moving.

Description:
May lives in a near-future where Hums (basic androids) are everywhere, and facial recognition is used as standard. Having lost her job and desperate for money to keep her two children living comfortably, she takes part in lab tests of an anti-facial recognition face-alteration treatment. Then she spends some of the money on taking her family to a rare and expensive forest retreat, where something disastrous happens.

Liked:
Convincing and compelling. There's not much about this fairly dystopian future that feels unbelievable or out of reach. The family is painted with loving detail and feels absolutely real, flawed and sweet and claustrophobic. This book made me feel super tense and stressed; I sympathised hugely with the protagonist and her troubles. Really impressed by this one.

Disliked:
Can't think of anything! I know others have mentioned the ending as a low point, but I liked it. It’s abrupt and unknowable, but I think that absolutely suited the themes.

Would definitely recommend. I’ll be checking out more by this author. Read if you like all things Black Mirror-esque.

This was an odd little book. I enjoyed the near future setting and the overall idea but I was a little underwhelmed/bemused with the execution. Maybe I missed the point but not much really happened and so much also did happen? And sometimes the protagonist really seemed real and then the next I was feeling like I was reading the day of a character in The Sims. And the children were really goddamn odd?! Wait, maybe the children were supposed to be strange. I’ve got to say it made them definitely seem more real. Maybe this is the first author to write children completely three dimensionally? Can you see what I mean, I'm unraveling!

It felt like I was supposed to kind of feel a wistful contentment at the end of the novel, but then there was also a really shoehorned ‘and it was all a dream’ which I’m not a fan of and also I can’t work out if that even was what the ending was saying. Was the AI evil? I dunno. Help, maybe this book has tricked me and made me question everything? Ms Phillips are you a genius?

It’s an interesting and intriguing book and weirdly an easy read given the backdrop of the story setting. Essentially at heart it is a book about marriage, family and worries for the future. Thanks to NetGalley for the early copy.

2.5 Hum was one of my most anticipated books of 2024 and I requested it the moment it was pushed to NetGalley! This book tried to cover a lot of ground and some of it, while surface level, provides for some interesting thoughts and conversations; but, the overall theme was primarily motherhood/parenting which wasn’t what I was expecting and dampened my enjoyment.

What worked for me:
● Dystopian world was fascinating. Set in a not-so-distant future with a terrifyingly intrusive surveillance culture, this world was a cautionary tale about social media, AI, reliance on technology and climate breakdown
● “Are they or aren’t they sentient” thing going on with the Hum
● Time we spent in the biodome* - the deep appreciation of what remained of the natural world was juxtaposed with the heartbreaking reality that these spaces were so rare and limited to those who could afford prohibitively expensive fees to enjoy them
● I’m always here for commentary on how vapid and harmful capitalism is

What I wasn’t so keen on:
● May’s annoying kids were unbearably obnoxious. Their whining and bickering got so much airtime and, similar to being trapped in any space with bratty kids, *sucked the atmosphere out of the biodome completely. Throughout the book, we were constantly being pulled out of interesting arcs by these horrible kids and their nonsensical dialogue.
● Could’ve done without the weird and jarring descriptions of urine, penises, and deeply uncomfortable sex. These were all gratuitous and not in the same vein style-wise as the rest of the writing.
● May and Jem were a frustrating pair: They didn’t communicate (I spend the entire book wondering why they were even married?) and they are in financial straits but keep spending what little money they did have on stupid stuff. It was painful and frustrating to watch.
● As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t gel with the theme. I was hoping for more focus on the dystopia, the ethics of the Hums, and some commentary on the direction we’re heading with technology. While some of these themes are covered, it’s all very light touch and doesn’t get under the hood of anything in a meaningful way. Instead, the focus of the book is around May’s relationship with motherhood and her (objectively horrible) kids. This wasn’t the immersive dystopian sci-fi that I’d expected based on the blurb.
● The vibe is just stressful. This is a tough book to 'enjoy' because everyone makes bad choices, the stress and desperation is palpable, and it has a really hopeless undercurrent.
● Plotholes and a lot of unsatisfactory resolutions <spoilers removed>

Hum sort of reminded me of Leave the World Behind albeit a bit faster paced. There was something about the writing style and the gratuitous descriptions of bodily fluids and acts that brought that book to mind.

I don’t think I’d recommend this one to hard sci-fi readers or those looking for a richly built dystopia with cutting commentary on technology. However, for those brand new to some of these themes and interested in how they may intersect with motherhood, this could be for you!

I was privileged to have my request to read this book accepted through NetGalley. Thank you, Atlantic Books!

I surprised myself by liking this as it is not my usual genre. The author has a flowing, compelling style which sweeps you along in this dystopian world she has created. The world is based on events in the here and now, cleverly woven into the plot (as she chronicles at the end of the book). There are shades of Big Brother and The Truman Show. The main character, May, is trying to do the best for her family after losing her job working to improve AI functioning. but makes lots of mistakes. Jem, her husband, a sort of odd-job man, is a weak character who hardly features. The children are rather annoying - demanding and rather whiny. I thought the end was a little puzzling I wasn't sure what was happening, but all in all a good read and a scary vision of the future if we don't get pollution, climate change and AI under control. Not to forget over-reliance on phones and other devices.