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.
