(courtesy Allen & Unwin Publishers)
Mixing a love story in with an often excoriating though wryly funny exploration of the inhumanity of big tech in the 21st century may not sound like the most viable of narrative drivers for a novel but in the hands of Elaine Castillo it is a masterful piece of writing on par with the much talked-about Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
Central to the compelling execution of this daring narrative driver is the central character of Girlie Delmundo, a beautiful Filipina woman about 40 who is the longest-serving content moderation worker on a social media platform which, along with the usual kittens, cooks and lifestyle influencers has people sharing conspiracy theories about the Holocaust, 9/11 and a host of other dark and shadowy ideas about the way the world really supposedly works.
Many people, the opening paragraph of the book observes, end up believing the very things they are supposed to moderate and police while others simply find the emotional and psychological burden of staring at the unremittingly seedy underbelly of society far too much to take.
But Girlie has somehow survived, no doubt in thanks to her wholly unhealthy unconsciously arrived at decision way back in childhood to shut off her emotions and compartmentalise her life into somewhat easier to handle chunks.
When you have a family who have self-combusted financially and yet who carry on as if nothing has happened, a little bit of compartmentalisation comes in handy.
She [Girlie] saw William’s tiny figure bend backwards in a sudden jerk that she recognized [sic] as laughter. A tinier hand lifted, waving queenly back.
But then two quite remarkable things happen to Girlie, she of set routines and relatively the same conversations over and over, which upend the tightly wound, heavily tamped-down certainties of her life.
She is chosen, seemingly out of nowhere – but of course she isn’t; in a company where everything is closely and forensically monitored, her selection is the result of heavily-analysed data and carefully measured decisions – for a promotion to a new virtual reality environment which will require someone who can spot a problem from a mile away.
Since it comes with a hefty pay rise, it’s a no-brainer for Girlie who it seems is the sole person in her family who’s aware of how perilous life can really be.
The executive who recruits her for the role is a very handsome, if emotionally quiet William Cheung, a British-educated man who is in Las Vegas, Nevada where Girlie is located and where her company maintains one of their key moderation centres, and while Girlie doesn’t think she’s interested in him, it soon becomes apparent, little bit by little bit that all those repressed emotions of hers desperately want to come out to play.
But as novel about emotional repression, big tech inhumanity and the weird places people have to go to dance between the two – not everyone does and Moderation archly but with driving humour what happens when people fall between the cracks – Moderation is about to release the hounds of love too soon.
(courtesy official Elaine Castillo author site)
Where the novel truly excels is in the quiet but pronounced ways it looks behind the scenes to what’s driving what at first appear to be fairly innocuous social interactions.
Helping to plan, with some reluctance, her cousin’s 30th birthday party – Maribel has found the love of her life with her girlfriend Avery and it’s going to be a celebration with a life-changing difference, which could either work or go messily south at speed – Girlie spends a great deal of time researching and talking about venues, discussing the kinds of Filipino foods to include on the menu and counselling Maribel on how daring she should be emotionally in a public environment, especially one so loaded with unyielding familial expectations.
On the surface it’s just party planning, but peel that away and there’s a whole lot more going on, all of which are potential landmines in a family that looks and is close but which rests on some fairly potentially fractious foundations.
Back at work, the impressive job offer Girlie responds looks reasonably straightforward – take on extra responsibilities at something you’ve proven you’re very good at and get paid a whole lot of money for a company that says they have your back and love what you do.
Just sign on the dotted line, turn up for your shifts and that’s that, right?
‘Oh. Well. He was my best friend,’ He cleared his throat. ‘So. Yes. I suppose. I loved him.’
‘That’s nice,’ she [Girlie] said. William blinked. ‘Loving someone, having a best friend,’ she clarified. ‘It’s not thing.’
William smiled, but it wasn’t his angel of history smile, no joy in it … ‘It’s not nothing,’ he agreed.
Well, if Moderation was any other novel that might be the case but there’s a great deal more going on than meets the eye and as Girlie begins to realise what underpins the new VR environments from an ideological point of view, what looks like an open-and-shut case of a dream promotion, slowly becomes anything but with corporate machinations, resurfacing psychological issues and a host of protective but breaking down emotional barriers all coming into play.
In the midst of smelling more than a few rats at the heart of a shiny big tech wonderland of future promise and obviously huge payoffs, Girlie is grappling with what William, who’s carrying more than a few emotional skeletons and burdens of his own, really means to her.
Is he just a boss? A ticket to a better life? Or could be Girlie’s type?
As love stories go, the one at the heart of Moderation, which walks hand-in-hand with an unrelenting but powerfully nuanced skewering of big tech and the lies it tells to get what it wants, is fantastically well done and slow boiling, the end result all but certain but the road there anything but a foregone conclusion.
Moderation features two broken but highly promising and wholly decent souls in a deeply flawed and corporately narcissistic environment trying to do the right thing, professionally and personally and not always getting it right but trying all the same.
The brilliance is the slow burn magnificence of the storytelling which goes blockbuster big but in ways incremental, measure and hugely impactful, allowing the revelations of the heart and of corporate life to breathe and have their moments, a rare intimacy in a novel that has an expansive canvas but remains to its end, beautifully and intimately expressed and still powerfully resonant even so.