We get to know Remy and his girlfriend Alicia through their obsession with Jen, the Instagram It Girl who seems effortlessly cool.  But they also despise her, in a way, for her inauthenticity. After a long weekend surfing with Jen's boyfriend (and a cast of detached, out of touch, rich kids) in the Hamptons, their obsession ramps up: Remy wants to fuck Jen (and then dispose of her) and Alicia creepily morphs into Jen (referred to as Alicia as Jen), going so far as to start working at a skincare store as Jen, wearing Jen's jewelry "creations".  Alicia has some mental health history with ED and her parents are fucking weird people who give mixed messages. Alicia is a creative and envisions a personal spa anyone could use to zone out, free dissociate and better themselves, called a Spod (spa+pod) that manifests as a black market hot tub covered in New England Patriots logos in the apartment they share with a Bevvers archetype roommate. 

One day Jen meets Alicia as Jen at the skincare store and the very same day, 

VERY ABRUPTLY ALICIA DIES in a bike accident where her chain broke. Remy struggles to come to grips with this (is she actually dead? The hospital incompetently directs him on a wild goose chase where we think maybe she is alive?) by using this Black Mirror service that lets "Alicia New" text him recapitulated missives from their past. Or are they? We are confused by the 3 typing dots (is she currently typing these?). A notable one speaks of old Alicia's period, "This is like the longest period of my life. I’m bleeding so much." Ooooookay. 

Woven through this loss story and this parasocial orgy is a "The Secret" type book, called The Apple Bush (cue Remy, "apples don't even grow on bushes") about your Consummate Result, and marking those Signifiers around you that lead you to your Consummate Result. Remy resists his flow as much as he resists surfing, weaponizing his skepticism and cynicism. (And I feel that.) Basic manifesting new age fuckery with some Brooklyn-esque hipster hippie granola girls orbiting Jen as spiritual guides. And Alicia's Spod, it might be a portal to other dimensions and maybe serves to provoke a Consummate Result. 

Unfortunately, Remy goes all fiery and his wires get crossed with what his Consummate Result is. At this point, the book veers off a sci fi cliff into a blaze of glory (my storygraph note at 81%: we have jumped the shark). As much as the Apple Bush focuses on the Signifiers and Consummate Flow, we also now experience the  antagonizing forces, Toxic Antagonists, who appear as your enemy/Consummate Result and get stronger as you approach your completion of your Consummate Result. There are murmurs of government cover-ups and Remy's TA is the final act of the book. He is basically playing Guess Who though, and we're never really sure he understands his Consummate Result. He thinks it's Jen's boyfriend who must die so he can bond more deeply with Jen. He shows up to the apartment to end him but he's not home. No matter - he pivots. Then he's pretty sure it's Jen herself and one of the final tableaus of the novel is Remy drowning Jen in a bathtub while he watches his TA (who he thinks is also Jen) weakening. 

The final image is Remy first feeding the corpse of Jen to the Spod and then watching Alicia as Jen come from the Spod. She sits on the couch to simply hold him, which was part of his vision of his Consummate Result, just the wrong people in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Bye Remy. Hope you find your dad. 👋

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I liked that if we strip away the unreliable narration, and look at the plot points, we can see what might have happened: we watched this cis man fall from a pithy cynicism into depression and psychosis until it devastates his whole social circle. There was so much carnage in pursuit of this Consummate Result...was any of that in alignment with the universe, or was he just crazy? I like that it's open to interpretation. As you can tell by this review, I think the Bevvers roommate, Jake, was kind of a throwaway character, he has some shading and context but he never matters too much, except as a conduit to other characters (Andrea, and maybe even the parrot, Sandy, had more of a role than Jake). 

I loved the atmosphere of the book and found myself wishing I could come back to it when I had to do other things. The creepiness was on point. I felt foreboding and curiosity and when the plot unfolded. And although it might not be how I would have written it, I didn't feel dissatisfied. When we took the turn into Sci-Fi, I was immediately turned off and felt myself eyeroll but in the last 20% I was able to re-commit and find that page turning quality again. I think that's pretty impressive. Maybe I'd glean more on a reread but I don't feel any burning desire to go through that again. Four stars. 

Ps I went back thru my reviews for the year and if you told me this book was written by Julia Armfield around the same time as Our Wives Under the Sea, I'd believe you. I think if you liked that, you'd like this. Detached partners grappling with existential anxiety and forces bigger than them enacting timeless dramas.