The Amateurs

Harmer’s funny, heartrending debut spins a standard tale of life on a depopulated world into a brilliant examination of abandonment and hope. Marie Desroches is one of the last 42 people on Earth. Most humans have disappeared through tech giant PINA’s port, a slickly marketed, semiconscious door into another reality, and the hapless few left behind wonder whether their loved ones are being prevented from coming back. Marie’s obsession is Jason, the ex-husband she never got over. When disaffected PINA publicist Brandon Dreyer arrives in her life, fleeing the tech demagogue who created the port, both Marie and Brandon find a chance to unstick from their broken pasts. With a gently Gibsonian critique of consumer culture and a fiercely loving core, this wry novel ably satisfies both the literary reader’s desire for precise, beautiful prose and the genre reader’s eagerness for richly imagined futures. This is a sparkling, cohesive, and sharply insightful novel and a remarkable debut. (Apr.)