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The Happiness Machine

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About this listen

Happiness is Pearl's job. Using the revolutionary Apricity machine, every day she provides customers with personalised recommendations for their emotional well-being: from eating more tangerines to cutting off a finger, from getting a dog to getting a divorce.

She's good at her job, her office manager tells her. But Pearl is starting to wonder whether it’s even possible to measure an emotion.

Pearl's teenage son, Rhett, is a sensitive boy who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence. He seems somehow to find greater contentment in being unhappy. If only Pearl could persuade him to take the Apricity test...but what if she doesn’t like what she finds?

The Happiness Machine is a wry, prescient and hilarious debut. For fans of Jennifer Egan and Ruth Ozeki, it is both a cautionary tale about the advance of technology and a scalpel-sharp depiction of the darkest depths of the human psyche.

©2018 Katie Williams (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Science Fiction Emotions Witty

Critic reviews

"Philosophical, funny, cleverly structured, unpredictable...the world-building is creative and completely convincing." (Gabrielle Zevin)

"How much control do we have over our own happiness - and would we be better off if we had the ability to nudge it just a little more? Tell the Machine Goodnight is a captivating, thought-provoking and utterly charming novel about the elusive nature of happiness and the limits of both technology and our own self-knowledge." (Carolyn Parkhurst, author of Harmony and The Dogs of Babel)

"Filled with extraordinary writing, wish-they-existed characters, and unexpected narrative turns, Tell the Machine Goodnight will delight your mind and heart." (Courtney Maum, author of Touch and I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You)
All stars
Most relevant
Bought this on recommendation of sci fi books but found the technology aspect was only a small part of the book which was heavily focused on stories of different seemingly connected characters. By the time I was invested in someone's story the book moves onto someone else. Had a hard time getting through the last chapters or caring about some of the characters stories (see Kala Pax). Would have liked to see the wider implications of the use of the Apricity machine - hinted at at Pearl's work - rather than zooming in on a few with little or no interaction with it.

Vignettes

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I liked the premise but the ending left me feeling a bit empty. Maybe that was the point?

Is the end missing a chapter

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I’d wanted to read or listen to this story for ages but found it hard to find because they changed its name. I enjoyed it overall, especially the central concept, but found the separate character stories felt disparate and it could have done with a more polished ending. The performances were good.

Interesting idea

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