{"product_id":"9781912147083-memory-and-straw","title":"Memory and Straw","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cp\u003eWinner of the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year 2017\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA face is nothing without its history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGavin and Emma live in Manhattan. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDelving into family stories and his roots in the Highlands of Scotland, he embarks on a quest to discover his own true face, `uniquely sprung from all the faces that had been’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eA face is nothing without its history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGavin and Emma live in Manhattan. She’s a musician. He works in Artificial Intelligence. He’s good at his job. Scarily good. He’s researching human features to make more realistic mask-bots – non-human ‘carers’ for elderly people. When his enquiry turns personal he’s forced to ask whether his own life is an artificial mask. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDelving into family stories and his roots in the Highlands of Scotland, he embarks on a quest to discover his own true face, ‘uniquely sprung from all the faces that had been’. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe returns to England to look after his Grampa. Travels. Reads old documents. Visits ruins. Borrows, plagiarises and invents. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut when Emma tells him his proper work is to make a story out of glass and steel, not memory and straw, which path will he choose? What’s the best story he can give her? \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA novel about the struggle for freedom and personal identity; what it means to be human. It fuses the glass and steel of our increasingly controlled algorithmic world with the memory and straw of our forebears’ world controlled by traditions and taboos, the seasons and the elements.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56451660775798,"sku":"9781912147083","price":11.45,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/orig_33616797.jpg?v=1760463312","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781912147083-memory-and-straw","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}