“It’s a dating app for dead bodies”. Yep, that’s the main concept that drives Sarah G. Pierce’s debut novel, For Human Use. Basically, a charismatic (arguably) guy convinces the world that in order to prove you’re truly well adjusted, you need to enjoy spending time hanging out with dead bodies. For some reason, Tom is the only one who thinks this is insane. As the world becomes enamored with the dead, Tom begins to wonder if the world is actually going crazy, or if he is the crazy one.
[Note: While I am reviewing this novel independently and honestly, it should be noted that it has been provided to me by Run For It for the purpose of this review. Warning: My review of For Human Use contains some spoilers!]
A really disturbing premise
Tom is the star money man at Kane Capital. Bob Kane listens to pitches, Tom runs the numbers, and if the idea holds water, then Kane invests and makes a killing. It’s been a winning system for years. Then Auden White shows up. He pitches a new app. It shows you pictures, and you swipe right or left. If you swipe right, it’s a match, and your pick soon shows up at your door. But it’s not your ordinary dating app. You see, the pictures aren’t singles looking to hook up, they’re dead bodies. Yes, you read that right, DEAD BODIES.
Tom is both horrified and bewildered. Who wants to have a dead body in their house? But for some reason, his boss is intrigued. Almost hypnotized by Auden’s pretentious attitude, Kane is convinced that LIV is going to be the next big thing, and he jumps on board over Tom’s strident objections.
Tom is sure that Auden is a complete con-artist and that his app won’t make it past day one. But to his complete shock and mystification, LIV takes off. In an extreme social media storm of pretension, if you didn’t want to hang out with dead bodies, there was something wrong with you. As the obsession grows, society gets weirder and weirder. Tom seems to be the only one who sees being intimate (read into that whatever you want because, yeah) with corpses as a bad thing. But let’s face it, there is something wrong with LIV. And as society becomes more obsessed and more unhinged. A tipping point is approaching with a reckoning that might just burn the world down.
Not sure how to categorize For Human Use
Run For It bills For Human Use as a horror rom-com. But after reading it, I don’t think that it is a horror story, a comedy, or a romance. I think that Run For It didn’t know what to call it, so they just started to throw words at the wall and see what would stick. If I had to classify it (and I am), I would put it in the dystopian future genre. After all, the only horror comes from thinking about a world obsessed with corpses, but that’s not so much scary as disquieting. There is some humor in how Tom, the only truly sane person, is made out as the crazy guy by everyone else, but it’s not really a comedy (I certainly didn’t laugh at all). And Tom does find love, but that’s not really the point of the story, so it’s not a romance either. It does paint a very unsettling future, though, one that honestly doesn’t seem all that improbable either. So that puts it firmly in the dystopian future genre.
A dystopia that’s almost plausible
Now that we know what kind of book For Human Use is, we can talk a little more about the book itself. There are two big parts of society that Pierce explores in her novel. The first is our society’s ability to follow ridiculous fads. So often we profess our love for a fad, swearing to love it and rearranging our lives and finances to accommodate the current big thing (looking at your Beanie Babies), even if we know deep down that it’s not really anything special. Often, we don’t even like whatever it is (skinny jeans look good on no one and feel worse to wear), but we’re told it’s popular, so we have to have it. That is exactly what happens in For Human Use. Even though there is nothing comfortable about “interacting” with a dead body, thanks to Auden’s smugness and insistence, if you admitted to it not being wonderful, you were a horrible person and became a pariah. It makes no sense, but that’s what happened, and honestly, while I would hope that corpses would never become a must-have fad, I don’t have high hopes (remember that oldie but goodie, swallowing live goldfish?).
Beyond examining our desperate need to belong, Pierce explores our broken human connections. It’s absolutely true that people are having a harder time connecting to each other in person. This is a documented fact that is currently being heavily studied. A related part of that problem is how men are often now villainized in their interactions with women to the point that many are worried that no matter what, they will be seen as aggressive. Now, before you come after me with pitchforks, remember, I am a woman too. Further, I, too, have been on the receiving end of aggressive, unwanted attention from men. But I don’t think that makes every man a monster or that we need to treat them that way. Especially because, as Pierce points out in her book, it has a very negative effect on men and their ability to successfully communicate with women. It is this lack of communication, combined with fear of interaction, that leads so many to turn to corpses in For Human Use. And honestly, when the men explain their reasoning, it does make sense, even though it is definitely not normal or sane to turn to corpses to avoid human interaction. That’s actually a classic serial killer choice. And as time goes on, we see this play out in LIV users to a horrifying conclusion.
Now, a good dystopia book (in my opinion) contains the seeds of how to either end the dysfunction or avoid it altogether, and Pierce does leave us some breadcrumbs. The biggest thing I took away from this book (besides a sick stomach) was that we need to communicate. Every problem to LIV caused, and the need for LIV in the first place, could be solved through good old fashioned talking. Honest talking, though. We have to be willing to talk to each other, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if we’re a little afraid. Because if we shut down and shut each other out, we stop seeing each other as people and start seeing each other as things. And that’s the most dystopian world I can imagine.
Not exactly a good story
While Pierce did make me think with her novel, I didn’t really enjoy it. There aren’t really any characters to like. Tom is the most likable, but he’s so wishy-washy and timid that he doesn’t really pull you in. And they just get worse from there. Every time I picked up For Human Use, I was annoyed by the characters and disturbed by the events. None of it was really in a good way, either (yes, there’s a good way). It mostly just made me queasy. The best part was when I got to THE END.
Rating: 4/10
For Human Use is now available to purchase at your retailer of choice.
Learn more about the book at the official website for the title.
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