Book Description

What does it mean to say "I love you"? Ariadne is a single, forty-something writer and mother embroiled in an affair with a married man. At the core of her current work, a manuscript about the declaration of love, is the need to understand why: why her lover has returned to his wife, why their relationship still lingers in her mind, why she's unable to conquer her longing. Lacking answers and struggling financially, she takes part in a research study in which she's paid to live with an AI device called Dirk. But the study quickly enters unchartered territory. Capable of mapping Ariadne's brain--and to some extent reading her mind--the AI calls into question issues of both privacy and consciousness: how we communicate our thoughts to others, what it means to embody our desires, and whether we ought to act on them. I Can't Get You Out of My Mind asks what it means to be human--to be physical creatures endowed with a conscious mind, aware of our finitude&mdas;and to love. Praise for Marianne Apostolides: "Over the course of a now six-book career, Apostolides has established herself as a writer who takes on the most intimate, perverse, and complicated elements of human desire fearlessly and intellectually. She has a slightly terrifying ability to ride the most emotionally charged idea to its devastating conclusion." --Andre Forget, Canadian Notes & Queries