The Voting Machine: A Temo McCarthy Novel

We experience everything it involves, from cleaning him after he has soiled himself, to how she views him, this vacant shell that she used to love. It's intimate and personal, and Smythe never holds back. It's a credit to Smythe's writing that he can address these tough themes - from global-warming to street gangs, from care work and social responsibility to religion and the nature of the soul — in such a frank and emotional way, yet keep the book so readable. And it really is: I devoured the page novel in a couple of days, compelled to discover more Beth and Vic, more about the world they inhabit, and, most of all, more about the Machine.

Ah yes, the Machine. I love it when authors create a character from inanimate objects or buildings, and Smythe did a great job with the Machine never referred to as anything other than the Machine. It's a constant presence, huge and over-bearing in Beth's spare room, humming and whirring, radiating its presence, never allowing you to forget that it is there. The source of Beth's pain, but also her only comfort.

There's something so ominous about it, something intangible, something The Machine by James Smythe is a dark, dreamlike or maybe that should be nightmarish delight to read. There's something ineffable about it, yet so grounded in reality. Smythe is undoubtedly a talented author, and I look forward to appreciating his work again soon. Jul 25, Niall rated it really liked it. The canvas is much smaller, and at its centre is a brutal blank novum, the titular Machine.

Around this central relationship is shaded a worn near-future Britain, warmer, more authoritarian, less cohesive than the present: Like The Testimony it is an exploration of the limits of human authority in the world, but it is more clearly a horror novel than its predecessor -- and a harsh and effective story for much of its length, but one that is in the end perhaps let down again slightly by its ending.

This time around the last page felt to me like a release from the engrossing intensity of the previous three-hundred-odd pages, just a little too close to well, there is a moral after all for my taste. Feb 19, Nisa rated it it was amazing Shelves: The ever mysterious machine, the love, the feeling of lost, the empty human. Truly a wicked machine which might be awkward to say because it's 'just' a machine. It was haunting throughout the whole story, standing there in the spare room, with the humming sounds.

But yet, a machine which gave people hope in returning and gaining back what they lost and what they love. But then, it was what they hoped. And that's what happened to Beth. Figuring she could change things around, figuring Breathtaking. Figuring she could change things around, figuring she could do it on her own. Taking home a man which became an empty human. Trying to bring back what she had lost.

Or actually creating a fantasy. I literally cried for Beth on the first half, getting into the alone emotions. Then literally cried for Vic on the second half because all the process was hurting him. And went with Beck till the end. I was touched with the words Our Soldiers, Ruined For Their Countries, and the patients of dementia, Alzheimer and amnesia began to be affected by the machine and was left as it became, which might just be fiction but sounded so real. I was disgusted by the way the machine made people puzzled, differentiating between it, reality and assumptions.

To Beth, she wasn't creating a monster, she was trying to create back a part of her life. The story taught me on God's fate, to not trust people too much, and love. And she'll pray that they let her keep on talking, lying on the floor in agony, screaming the words out, thinking it all through. Apr 16, Heinrich Souza rated it it was ok Shelves: A disappointment, after "The Explorer" which I read earlier this year.

James Smythe's pacing is excellent. I would almost consider him to be Sci-Fi's answer to Stephen King. I read this in a day. That's the fastest I've ever read pages. His descriptions of PTSD symptoms from a human perspective, rather than a clinical one, are very good; I have to infer that he did a lot of research on the subject. The overall concept seems quite derivative of some fil A disappointment, after "The Explorer" which I read earlier this year.

The overall concept seems quite derivative of some films I've seen - some parts Primer, some parts Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, thrown in some Fight Club for good measure.

The synopsis mentions Frankenstein, but besides the appearance of an angry mob in the story, I don't see the similarity. At the end of the day, the story could easily be adapted as a forgettable Dr Who Episodes. Which is a shame, because the author has potential. It's just not reflected in this book. Mar 27, Tudor Ciocarlie rated it really liked it Shelves: What a dark, suffocating, creepy and claustrophobic novel.

I wish more science-fiction would be this uncomfortable. Mar 04, Ray Copeland rated it it was amazing. A really dark story and beautifully written. As promised, this is a cautionary examination of what makes us human: As in all such stories Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one I can recall , the depiction of how memory is erased and re installed is problematic, since our main frame of reference for this is how we do it on our electronic devices.

And yet As promised, this is a cautionary examination of what makes us human: Neither is the outdatedness of the digital technology depicted: In a dystopia, some inventions, ubiquitous though they are in our world, never get funded no matter how space-age the fictional world is. Such details are buried in pages of dense paragraphs. The atmosphere is oppressive, thanks in part to the start-of-summer setting in that warmed-up world, reinforced by present-tense narration that places us squarely in the midst of it.

A typical sentence will have her plugging in and unplugging the Machine, opening a bottle of water and gulping it down, contemplating the smell of petrichor, or opening the fridge and then drinking water and using the toilet before switching on the TV. The scene where Beth cleans her husband after he has soiled himself is particularly harrowing in its journalistic detail.

In retrospect, Beth is interacting with a lot of people in these chapters: The literate world writers as well as their readers is divided over the necessity of speech marks in fiction, as author Lionel Shriver eloquently wrote in a Wall Street Journal article. Beth needs to be isolated. Sep 15, Ian Mond rated it it was amazing. But the fact is that while books like The Machine might come and go, making only the smallest of ripples, they still get published.

The Machine is written in present tense. It deals with issues of memory loss and identity and the friction between science and faith. Your stuck in the head of the main character, Beth, privy to her obsessive need to give her husband, currently in a vegetative state, back his memories. Take the following paragraph: The bodies of dogs and cats in the street, floating down. The dead being dredged out onto boats. Beth goes to lunch and sits alone, on a table at the far end. She sees Laura, who makes a beeline for her.

She starts talking about her life, how she argued with her boyfriend the previous night. As Beth burrows further into the rabbit hole, that intense focus somehow narrows further. This should be off putting, close to unreadable, and yet Smythe somehow pulls it off. Her anger and frustration, her desperate desire to use The Machine to re-create her husband like he was before he went off to war, before he was shot in the head, before he came back to her wounded both physically and psychologically, before he became a test subject for The Machine.

You want her to succeed. But more then just sympathy for Beth, the world she lives in feels more then just a cobbled together thought experiment. This sense that life will go on, the mundane will still occupy most of our lives, even while everything goes to hell. In a perfect world, there would be buzz for this book.

Jul 30, Roddy Williams rated it really liked it Shelves: This is a refreshingly short novel at a time when genre novels are bulking up and threatening in many cases to be only the first volume of a proposed trilogy. It keeps the characters to a bare minimum which helps to focus on them and their role in the drama. Beth is a teacher in a near future Britain scarred and flooded by the effects of climate change.

Her husband, Vic, injured and traumatised by military servic This is a refreshingly short novel at a time when genre novels are bulking up and threatening in many cases to be only the first volume of a proposed trilogy. Her husband, Vic, injured and traumatised by military service in Iran and subsequently subject to episodes of violence, was given the opportunity to try a revolutionary treatment in which a machine removes traumatic memories.

Now, Beth believes, having purchased one of the original machines, that she can return the memories he recorded back into his head and resurrect him, thus regaining her husband and absolving her guilt. There are echoes of the Frankenstein mythos referenced within the novel, in some cases quite obviously.

There is a scene where a child is thrown from a cliff into the sea, which brings to mind a scene from the original Boris Karloff film. Unless I am missing some additional subtext there is no good reason for this extensive connection to the Shelley novel. I would disagree, since Smythe has created a plausible version of a near-future UK in which climate change has seen the sea invading the land.

It is necessarily bleak. In its own way, this is a modern Gothic horror built around the central figure of the Machine itself, a huge and enigmatic presence which has moods demonstrated by its various hums, engine roars and physical vibrations. One gets the impression that the machine may be almost orchestrating events for its own purposes. The novel leads relentlessly and inevitably to its perhaps a little too predictable conclusion, but is no less satisfying for that. Smythe exhibits a welcome economy of writing which flies in the face of some of the more corpulent novels weighing down the bookshelves of genre readers.

There are two novels here, bumping against and getting in the way of each other, the one great and the other not so good. The great novel is a quite wonderful dystopia focusing on a UK ravaged by climate change, with the focus on deteriorating social cohesiveness and increasing anarchy as a result. The not-so-great novel is a muddled psychological study of the impact of technology on human relations, which quickly devolves into a rather icky horror story that skips over the science in favour of l There are two novels here, bumping against and getting in the way of each other, the one great and the other not so good.

The not-so-great novel is a muddled psychological study of the impact of technology on human relations, which quickly devolves into a rather icky horror story that skips over the science in favour of lurid thrills and scares. Given that the world depicted by Smythe is so constrained by the problems of climate change and crumbling social order, I found it difficult to comprehend how such a society could develop a technology as advanced as the Machine. Or what purpose it could serve. And what is this war that the protagonist returns from so ravaged by?

I think Iraq is mentioned vaguely at one point — it might have made more sense if the war had been of galactic origin, to be honest, with maybe the Machine a spoil of this interstellar conflict. And what exactly does the Machine do? I am still unsure, having finished the novel.

A lot of reviews point to Frankenstein as an exemplar, but this is much more a zombie novel. I thought the bits alluding to a separate consciousness or dimensionality of the Machine, such as when Beth peers inside its workings and only sees endless darkness, was an attempt to elevate the novel to Lovecraftian mystery, but this is so disconnected from the main narrative that it hardly registers.

Of course, the meta-ending throws everything that has transpired into question this is not a spoiler, actually , but it turns out to be far more of a cop-out than the hard-boiled ending demanded by the initial rather straightforward narrative. Ultimately this is a curious blend of Ballardian dystopic ennui and Stephen King gross-out horror that does not quite gel, and is quite emotionless to boot, and consequently more heavy-handed and distasteful than effective and fashionably depraved.

Still, Smythe is clearly a talented and adventurous writer, and I will definitely be on the lookout for some of his earlier books to see how he has evolved and transformed. I forgot to add what I found to be my biggest gripe with this book actually: Sure, for some writers like Cormac McCarthy it has become a legitimate affectation, but leaving out speech marks simply because you think it is cool and post-modern is just not on.

I do not think writers have any idea how difficult and weird it makes the reading experience for readers. Especially in a thriller-type plot like The Machine , where you want to be racing along, I found myself jumping out of the narrative repeatedly as I tried to figure out the reported speech.

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Speech marks are there for a perfectly legitimate reason. So unless you are a better writer than Cormac McCarthy who uses ellipses anyway , please please use them! Jul 03, Ralph Palm rated it it was amazing Shelves: I had a writing teacher once who said 'Never leave your characters alone. Without someone else, there's no interaction. No interaction, no conflict. No conflict, no story. If you have to have a character walking along the beach, alone with his thoughts, give him a dog.

The 'dog' here is the Machine of the title. It is described, but does not interact. The protagonist is left alone for long stretches. Giving this isolation something to focus on I had a writing teacher once who said 'Never leave your characters alone. Giving this isolation something to focus on the Machine attenuates it some how, intensifies it, into a mood of deep uncertainty and dread. The fact that loneliness is her primary motivation intensifies this mood even more to end her isolation, she isolates herself more and more. I can't explain how or why this dread works so well without giving away the ending, but it really does.

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I liked the subtlety of it. It's a sad book, but in a tragic not pathetic way. The pathetic can work sometimes, but usually results in a feeling of 'why did I subject myself to this? The impossibility of a happy ending provides a kind of catharsis, a sadness that releases or purges one's own, like a 'good cry'. That The Machine manages to be such a tragedy in the absence of any direct or immediately apparent conflict is quite a stylistic accomplishment.

I am definitely left curious about Smythe's other books. If you read this, and you feel like it's dragging in the middle, stick it out. The climax builds up not the steadily rising heat of typical bestseller, but in a low slow burn that ends in an explosion of Hurry up and finish so we can talk about it. Jun 08, Roman Clodia rated it it was amazing. I don't want to say anything about the plot since anything beyond the publisher's blurb would be a spoiler - but, for once, the publisher has got it spot on: This is an eerie and menacing story that is written with a light but very assured touch.

The claustrophobic setting suits the grim plot perfectly, and the narrative itself is beautiful I don't want to say anything about the plot since anything beyond the publisher's blurb would be a spoiler - but, for once, the publisher has got it spot on: The claustrophobic setting suits the grim plot perfectly, and the narrative itself is beautifully controlled - small things that we notice but don't dwell on come back to haunt us, and it's not until the shocking ending that everything falls perfectly into place. It's not often that I'm surprised by a plot but this one really did creep up on me.

The intellectual probings about the relationships between man-machine, mind-body-soul, about the nature of love and how far it should go, give this an intellectual weight but one which never takes over from the understated emotions at play or the pure grip of the story. This is a book which I finished in the small hours of the morning because I couldn't think about sleep until I'd finished it - and once I did, despite the satisfaction of a perfectly-tied-up story, I still wanted to re-read it immediately.

So this works beautifully on all levels: Read it - this is brilliant! Oct 20, Sid Nuncius rated it it was amazing. I thought this was a brilliant book. It is intelligent, thoughtful and completely gripping. I cannot really describe the plot without giving away too much, so I won't. The publishers' synopsis is right - this is a Frankenstein for the twenty-first century it is set in the near future. It is a fantastic piece of storytelling: James I thought this was a brilliant book.

Dmitri Ragano

James Smythe generates a brilliant air of menace both in the plot and setting, which builds slowly and gripped me completely. The book, as well as being a page-turning story, is a thoughtful look at the nature of memory, at what makes us the people we are and at what might happen if the fundamentals of our characters and memories are altered. It is hard to give more of flavour of this book because I am wary of spoilers, but I warmly recommend it to anyone who likes a dark, unsettling but very intelligent and thought-provoking read which will keep you up late to finish it.

It is one of the best things I have read for some time. I liked this book. It is ultimately about passion. About what people care about enough to do the things they might and do do.

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The story centres around a medical procedure to help people remember and, more importantly, to help them forget. Having imagined the process and what could go wrong with it the story asks important questions about human identity. About what makes us who we are. I enjoyed the book and finished it quickly, so why have i not given it 5 stars?

I found some of the problems, over I liked this book. I found some of the problems, overcome and not, contrived. Not what the author believed would happen, but there to make a point and be used. But I fully accept I could be wrong about that it it does not stop this bring, overall, a good read. Aug 25, Angela Elizabeth rated it liked it. Enjoyable, futuristic take on Frankenstein with a little Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind thrown in for good measure. Well-written but a tad on the predictable side. Impressive portrayals of the difficulties of returning from war, and also caring for a loved one who has been disabled.

Not all questions adequately answered, but compelling enough from start to finish. Brilliantly written; dark and unsettling. Left broken by the loss of her husband to The Machine, Beth struggles to confront the new reality of her life. She plots to fix what was broken, to bring her husband back, but as she gets ever closer to her goal the strain of her loss and ambiguous nature of her future begin to wear away at her fragile state of being.

Mar 04, Robbo rated it liked it. An absorbing read except for the last chapter? The characterisation and mood of setting were good but the background of the banning of the machines, their appearance and what climatic fate has befallen the planet could have been outlined in greater detail. However the sense of Isolation and Alienation were very good. Mar 29, Chris Glover rated it it was ok. For some reason, the present tense just doesn't do it for me. I think was a good stab at a creepy story, but something just fell flat.

I'm not saying I could have done better, and I think this author will only get better. But between the lack of a subplot to keep you turning the pages, the attempt at a twisty ending, and the very brief chapters, something got lost in translation. May 20, Timothy Ward rated it really liked it Shelves: Like a heart-attack in slow motion, The Machine is a terrifying experience into the unknown reaches of human physiology and our need for love. Full review at Adventures in SciFi Publishing: The story itself is a crazy adventure that requires a slight amount of reader acceptance that somehow one person can always seem to be in the wrong place or right place at the wrong time.

This is not a new characteristic to stories, there are no lack of books and movies that require the same level of acceptance of convenient character interaction. If the reader is willing to provide the right indulgences, the writing and the story will not disappoint you. If you need some junk food, this book is sure to satisfy. In the sequel to Employee of The Year, the plot thickens as Temo finds himself in Las Vegas after a string of bad luck and choices.

He ends up working with the voter registration programme he encounters a number of new characters and finds himself in even more danger. In book 2 of this trilogy Temo's life has more twists and turns as he unearths a part of a bigger evil. The narrative is still as gripping and we see the action from the front through Temo's eyes.

Seldom are sequels better than the first offering but this one definitely is. Ragano impresses with his knowledge of politics and finance as well as Texas Hold 'em in this sequel. This political thriller takes some unexpected turns as the reader gets a crash course in FBI investigation, political campaigns, drug cartels and parts of Las Vegas and Los Angeles tourists never see. Ragano really did his homework on 1 the scary influence that major crime syndicates have over politics and the criminal justice system in Mexico and the Southwest United States and 2 the dirty tricks and intrigue of grass roots political campaigning.

The tension and suspense continues to ratchet up throughout this briskly-paced whodunit. I'm a fan of stories that on the surface seem simple, yet once you scratch the surface become more complex and you can't figure out what comes next, this is that type of story. Reminiscent of The Firm, but with a far better ending Dmitri takes us on a journey of, danger and enlightenment, as we dramatically travel to places that act as backdrop to the different groups involved in The Voting Machine. See all 5 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers.

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