Summary

In Part I, Gish Jen’s narrator, Grant, introduces his family — his teenage daughter, Gwen, and his wife, Eleanor — who live in an unspecified future version of the United States, now called AutoAmerica. Narrating in the first-person from an unknown point in time, Grant recounts the early, idyllic days of Gwen’s childhood. His narration describes how he came to realize that Gwen possessed a gift for baseball, mixed with references to the larger forces of automation, climate change, and government surveillance that led to increased restrictions on individuals. These changes divided society into two distinct classes, the Netted and the Surplus. Grant and his family, the Cannon-Chastanets, belong to the Surplus class.

When the novel begins, the systems within AutoAmerica have long been in place. Advanced technology has produced waves of automation that eliminated Grant’s career as the director of an...