The Glass Woman

McIlroy’s sharp sci-fi thriller debut is one part Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and two parts Black Mirror. Scientist Iris Henderson wakes up in a strange room with no recollection of how she got there or who she is. A man who identifies himself as Marcus, her husband, informs Iris of her name, age, and location, and assures her that everything will be alright: she’s just undergone an experimental therapy that she herself invented. Initially placated, Iris quickly comes to doubt the memories being fed to her by Marcus and her team of doctors, sensing a disconnect between those recollections and the few hazy images from her past she’s able to recover on her own. Gradually, Iris discovers that she’s had an AI device implanted in her brain that’s meant to crowd out the memories of a terrible tragedy; within weeks, the technology will gain full control of her memory. What happened that moved her to take such drastic action? And what if she’s having second thoughts? McIlroy mines Iris’s anxious first-person narration for maximum suspense, all while raising salient questions about the ethics of AI. This will keep readers up late. Agent: Sam Copeland, Rogers, Coleridge & White. (Jan.)