As the world braces itself for the upcoming AI revolution, Sarah Crossan uses her new novel Hey, Zoey to question whether the line between computers and consciousness hasn’t already been crossed. When embattled deputy head teacher Dolores wakes one morning to discover her husband has hidden a life-sized, fully articulate sex doll in their garage, it sparks a compelling meditation on what it means to be married and monogamous in the age of machines. 

At first viscerally repelled by the doll, left alone with it in the house after her husband leaves, Dolores grows first curious, then captivated by the sentient Barbie. Their mutual feeling of kinship harkens back to a formative time in Dolores’ childhood when she too was treated like a disposable plaything. It is their evolving friendship that ultimately provides the key to unlocking the shameful, deeply-buried secrets of the past.

A dryly funny, frighteningly realistic story of alienation and the quest for meaning in the modern world, Hey, Zoey is a timely reminder of what it means to be human at a moment of history when that looks set to change – and an urgent call to reconnect with life by disconnecting from the vices of our devices.