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The Artist's Novel
PlayerOne (What is to Become of Us), 2010
Literary synopsis
It's the end of an era: our era. What better place to watch the end of the world than the shabby Toronto Airport Camelot Hotel cocktail lounge? When oil prices suddenly rise to almost a thousand dollars a barrel, the power cuts out, the TV fades to static and planes stop taking off. No one can get a cellphone to work. While things explode, and toxic fallout drifts closer, we get to know Karen, a receptionist at a psychiatric clinic who has flown in to meet a guy from an internet chatroom; Luke, a small-town pastor who has just run off with $20,000 from the church renovation fund; Rachel, an impossibly beautiful young autistic woman who has bought a $3,400 Chanel dress in order to help find a man to father her child; and Rick, an ex-alcoholic bartender who wants to give everything he owns to a self-help guru with a bad fake tan.
-Scarlett Thomas
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