The Amateurs - Readings

Description

In the style of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, Dave Eggers' The Circle: a post-apocalyptic examination of nostalgia, loss and the possibility of starting over.

Allow us to introduce you to the newest product from PINA, the world's largest tech company. "Port" is a curiously irresistible device that offers the impossible: space-time travel mysteriously powered by nostalgia and longing. Step inside a Port and find yourself transported to wherever and whenever your heart desires: a bygone youth, a dreamed-of future, the fabled past.

In the near-future world of Liz Harmer's extraordinary novel, Port becomes a phenomenon, but soon it is clear that many who pass through its portal won't be coming back—either unwilling to return or, more ominously, unable to do so. After a few short years, the population plummets. The grid goes down. Among those who remain is Marie, a thirtysomething artist living in a small community of Port-resistors camping out in the abandoned mansions of a former steel town. As winter approaches the group considers heading south, but Marie clings to the hope that her long lost lover will one day return to the spot where he disappeared.

Meanwhile, PINA's corporate campus in California has become a cultish enclave of survivors. Brandon, the right-hand man to the mad genius who invented Port, decides to get out. He steals a car and drives north-east, where he hopes to find his missing mother. And there he meets Marie.

The Amateurs is a story of rapture and romance, and an astoundingly powerful tale about what happens when technology meets desire.

About the Author

LIZ HARMER’s first novel, The Amateurs, was a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award. Her award-winning stories, essays and poems have been published widely, and she has been a fellow at both the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers Conferences. She has won a National Magazine Award in Personal Journalism, was longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and was a finalist for a Glimmer Train Prize. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. Raised in Hamilton, Ontario, she now lives in Southern California.