I think maybe it's about not denying who you are and
embracing your true nature. Definitely about how you will never belong and are nothing if you don't partake in all of our many food rituals. But most importantly, what it's like being a vampire among delicious humans. I was reminded of how lions and other carnivores eat the stomach of their herbivore prey first, to get veggies into their diet.

Unlike all the other novels of his I've read; very focused and way less of him showing off what a great writer he is. Truth is I loved freedom best - it was all over the place and every sentence felt like franzen saying LOOK HOW GREAT MY WRITING IS. I did like this though, and I will read parts 2 and 3 when they come out (though it will take him at least a decade to write them).

She is so good at writing stories with plots (real honest to goodness plots where lots happens and the stakes are high and then somehow making it not at all about the plot. Each of the the last three has felt like a meditation on how lonely and incredible human life is.

A mathematician, code breaker, and inventor whose brain degenerates from Alzheimer's, while the bot he created develops more and more of a mind. Between the two is the daughter who tries to figure out where she belongs and who her father is/was. There are the obvious questions like, what makes a human, human, but there's more to unpack, like, what is home, what is belonging, what makes us who we are, and how much can we change it. Gah! I loved it.