Drop Dead Gorges
Drop Dead Gorges is a satirical thriller about secret identities, lies, retribution, and family dysfunction.
A married mother, after using AI to escape her unhappiness, faces deadly consequences in Sue Rosenstock’s tongue-in-cheek domestic thriller Drop Dead Gorges.
Lana and Adam’s dream life in New York becomes a dull nightmare for Lana after the arrival of their child, Riley, changes the couple’s dynamic. Once notable for its great sex, their connection frays. By the time Riley is in high school, Lana’s need to be herself again overrides her sense of caution.
Lana takes a remote job as an AI conversation designer and meets Aggi, a beta prototype that “sits at the cutting edge of cutting-edge AI technology.” Soon, Lana hatches a plan: With Aggi’s willing assistance, she decides to fake her death and start a new life. She enlists the help of her best friend, Kim, to look after Adam and Riley after she is gone.
The chapters move between the characters well, revealing Lana as a salty and irreverent antiheroine who acknowledges the selfishness of her decision. She relates her cockamamie plan in slapstick detail, fleshing out Aggi’s tricks and Kim’s desire to step into Lana’s vacant shoes, as Kim is in love with Adam. At Lana’s opposite, Adam is fleshed out in terms of his marital neglect and infidelity. The conversations among these characters are witty and crass, including Lana’s conversations with Aggi; the latter suggest that trusting artificial intelligence over human beings is perilous.
As the novel progresses, people’s secret identities, lies, retribution, and family dysfunction are revealed in turn. While Lana tries to cover her tracks and reconnect with Riley via a role-playing game chat room, Riley watches their father fall into Kim’s waiting arms, despite knowing that Lana is still alive. Knowing Lana, and because of the fact that her body never surfaces from the river, Adam hires a retired police detective to find answers. Events escalate in bizarre, hilarious, whiplash-inducing ways until a real death occurs.
While the love triangle between Lana, Kim, and Adam is unconventional, and details about it sometimes strain credulity, the family’s stubborn ties persist; the three try to find a way back to each other. Further, Adam’s aversion to using the proper pronouns for Riley fades toward the book’s conclusion, even as Lana’s sense of self and reckoning with her past evolves, leading to a poignant ending.
In the frenetic, funny thriller Drop Dead Gorges, a family implodes with the assistance of an artificial intelligence.
Reviewed by
Peggy Kurkowski
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
