Future Perfect

I have recently read two books by the same title. Future Perfect by Jen Larsen and Future Perfect by Felicia Yap.

Future Perfect by Felicia Yap is a science fiction thriller that was released this year. It is a page-turner, a compelling read if you are into science fiction. The story spans from the snowy 1980s Montana to 1990s Manhattan to a drone-filled 2030s Britain.

What if there were an iPredict app who could give you forecasts for the day, would you want it ? It is 8 June 2030. the Police Commissioner Christian Verger cannot believe that iPredict tells him that he has a 99.74% chance of dying the next day. In case iPredict is correct, he needs to tell his fiancée Viola that he loves her. The day has begun badly. Viola has left him and their voice assistant, Alexa has been acting up. When he asks for a single expresso with two sugars, Alexa's voice is disapproving ' as far as a voice assistant can sound disapproving' Alexa serves him a cappuccino and insists that he always has a cappuccino in the morning and that he should be taking less sugar to minimise blood sugar spikes given 'recent sleep metrics and health data'. As Christian checks his Work app and finds that there are 148 notifications and five missed calls from his advisor, an e-pigeon lands on the balcony ledge holding a special delivery. It is a letter from Viola. Only then he realises that his fiancée has moved out. There has been some tension between them and she needs some space apart to work out where their relationship stands. She has taken her cat, KitKat and most of her belongings. She does not know why her fiancé is calling Ella's name and talks in his sleep. Ella must be a ghost from his past and he is evasive when she asks him. In the meantime, Christian is in a race to solve a crime. A bomb has exploded during a fashion show, killing a beautiful model on the catwalk and they have to find the murderer. The much celebrated fashion designer Alexander King is not postponing his fashion show scheduled to be held in London that very evening despite what happened during his show held in Manhattan the previous evening. Christian wants to survive the day and comes clean with Viola about his tumultuous past that explains who Ella is.

The fiction is narrated in the first person voice of the characters and through their individual narratives, you get to know each character and the internal conflicts each of them has to struggle with. There are full of surprises for the reader along the way. As the story unfolds, you get to put together pieces of information like working on a jigsaw puzzle. Felicia Yap has woven together a futuristic story that is also a story about love and friendships. Technology could advance, the core of humanity remains. Future Perfect is a very smart and captivating read. 

Felicia Yap grew up in Kuala Lumpur. She read biochemistry at Imperial College London, before achieving a doctorate in history (and a half-blue in competitive ballroom dancing) at Cambridge University. She has written for The Economist and The Business Times. She has also worked as a radioactive-cell biologist, a war historian, a Cambridge lecturer, a technology journalist, a theatre critic, a flea-market trader and a catwalk model. 

Future Perfect is the author's second novel. Yesterday was her debut novel. In Yesterday written by Felicia Yap , there are only two categories of people. Monos, the majority , have only one day memory while the elite Duos have two days’ worth of memory. They have to record their days in their iDiaries so they can have a memory of some kind. The question is: Can one be  truthful in their account of their everyday? Yesterday is a story about love between two people even though their union is disapproved  by the society they live in. It is also about memories and what we choose to believe and things that  we could remember but must forget. It is another compelling read.

click

Future Perfect by Jen Larsen is a coming-of-age story set in California. In the story, every year on her birthday, Ashley Perkins gets a card from her grandmother. Every year Ashley's card also contains a promise, lose enough weight, grandmother will give her something. For instance, 75 pounds for a shopping trip in Paris. Ashley does not think there is anything wrong with her physique or her looks. She is big but she is happy with her body. Her grandmother wants her to lose weight thinking that she will have a better future. Ashley is a brilliant student and she dreams of going to Harvard. She wants to be like her grandmother who is a surgeon. This year, Grandmother offers her the one thing she really wants : four years worth of tuition fee to attend Harvard University if she gets weight-loss surgery. Ashley is grateful to her grandmother for caring for her and her father since her mother left them. She studies hard and works part-time as a server at a busy restaurant in the neighbourhood. But she does not want to get weight-loss surgery.

Ashley's good friends are also going through issues of their own. Jolene is a transgender and her parents disapprove of her choice and identity . Laura is free-spirited and wants to pursue her artist dreams while her dad wants her to go to college. The story is about being comfortable in your own skin, finding your directions and knowing who you are.

Ashley is a confident teenager. As she grapples with what others think and she knows that her grandmother only wants what is best for her as she loves her, she agonises about taking up her grandmother's offer. Ultimately she decides to stay true to herself , believes in herself and not affected by how others may view her. It's about embracing your body image.

Its author, Jen Larsen has first written and published Stranger Here, a memoir that is about her struggle with being overweight. There is a similarity between Larsen and Ashley. Future Perfect is about self-possession and believing in yourself, a necessary trait for everyone.

Yesterday Once More

Cambridge, England

Good memory can be a curse if we want to do the forgetting and forgetting is not possible. I have an uncle who  is in his nineties. I remember having this conversation about Japanese restaurants and that there is a grocer in his neighbourhood selling Japanese food products. He told me that he had never stepped into any Japanese restaurant or shop and  would not intend to. He explained that he could not forget what happened during the Japanese Occupation  in World War II. The irony is  that his wife who is my mother's sister is suffering from dementia and she is doing all the forgetting including the pains that her husband might have caused her. 

Whether unwittingly or wittingly we all have selective memory. To keep our sanity, we may consciously choose not to dwell on bad memories, otherwise these bad experiences can stop us in our tracks and prevent us from moving on. Revisitng the past can invite nostalgia for some people and for some others, they wish they could re-write their past. What if you had to keep a journal, what would you like your future self to know about  you ? 

In Yesterday written by Felicia Yap , there are only two categories of people. Monos, the majority , have only one day memory while the elite Duos have two days’ worth of memory. They have to record their days in their iDiaries so they can have a memory of some kind. The question is: Can one be  truthful in their account of their everyday? 

Mark Henry Evans, a novelist and an aspiring politician is a Duo and he is married to Claire, Mono. Mark is vying to be the next MP for South Cambridgeshire. A body has been found in the river behind the Evans' home. Hans Richardson, the detective investigating the case has thought that he would take after Duo Dad and not Mono Mum and one morning , he wakes up and realises that he can’t remember what happened two days ago. It is catastrophic but  Hans continues to masquerade  as a Duo and he  needs to solve the crime in twenty-four hours. The body is one Sophia Alyssa Ayling and she has been involved with Mark for some time. Monos can only remember what happened yesterday and Duos can remember the day before yesterday thus they are regarded as more superior and a class above.Claire is devastated after discovering that her Duo husband has been unfaithful, she is also troubled by the fact that Mark is the prime suspect for the murder. The characters have to rely on their iDiaries to help them understand the past. Claire and Mark have different  account of the past in the life  they have shared together.

Cambridge

As the story unfolds, there are skeletons in their closet. The story takes place in a village near Cambridge and it is narrated in the first person’s voice. Detective Hans is combing through Sophia’s iDiary to solve the crime. He is racing against time.

'10 HOURS UNTIL THE END OF THE DAY

She’s mad . Positively rabid. Also clueless about the way good detectives operate. But her diary’s strangely compelling. Unfathomable vitriol, when coupled with a healty dose of insanity, has a way of making even a hardened inspector turn pages. I’m inclined to read on, even though her diary has taken up another twenty minutes of my precious time.

    But I need some coffee first. My head is crying out for an injection of caffeine. I get up from my chair, grimacing at the pins and needles shooting up my legs. Just then. Tobt comes rushing in with a pile of papers.

  “ Hans,” he says. “ I’ve tracked down her Barclays records------“

“ Let me guess. She’s flush.”'

Sophia remembers everything thus she is full of vengeance and suffering from the pains that cannot heal despite having spent 17 years in St Augustine, a mental hospital . In order to be certified sound to be released, she had to keep up the façade for the warders by maintaining a iDiary so as to appear “ normal”.

In Sophia’s iDiary, she writes:

‘ Why can’t I be like the other people around me?  Like the Mono housewife who lives next door with her cat and husband. Who wakes up cheerful most mornings. Ready to begin yet another page of her life. Emotionally untainted by the previous pages. Blissful in her selective ignorance.

      She isn’t a prisoner of her unwanted past.

      Will I ever be free from bad memories? Free of the traumas clogging my mind. Swamping it . Weighing it down. Free of the baggage of memory. The burden of remembering. Free of knowing what I do not wish to know. ‘

Sophia also writes in her iDiary ,

'  Yet bad memories have a stubborn tendency to stick around. The god-awful ones. They refuse to travel down the fuzzy route. They creep back into my mind at the most inaopportune moments. They haunt me in the middle of the night. '

In the story, the Monos and the Duos live in a world where technology defines them.

‘Technology defines us, whether we like it or not. These days, we are utterly dependent on external devices as repositories of facts, assumptions, and memories. We are but the sum total of our digital presence. We are but the sum total of our digital presence. We use iDiaries and social media networks to define and delude ourselves because they contain what we prefer to remember. What we want the outer world to see. Yet our carefully curated public personae frequently bear like resemblance to our true inner selves. The two faces of our remembered lives are disparate and often contradictory.

                                                            ----“The Curse of Modern Technology”

                                                                          The Guardian, 2 April 2015'

Yesterday is a page turner.  I like it because the story is about love between two people even though their union is disapproved  by the society they live in. It is also about memories and what we choose to believe and things that  we could remember but must forget.....