Toby Grant, main character of Keith Pearson's Tuned Out, is a rather misguided millennial who sincerely believes that his parents had an easier time coming of age in the sixties and seventies than he is having now. Admittedly, in some ways they probably did - but all of us know that, for good reason, the grass usually appears to be a little greener when you're looking at it from a distance. So what might happen were Toby given a chance to see his parents' generation up close and personal for himself?
We are about to find out.
"The problem with social media...is that it doesn't offer a balanced reflection of the lives your friends are actually leading. Everyone is keen to show photos of their latest holiday or new car but not so many are keen to share photos of their bathroom scales post-holiday, or the final demand from the car finance company."
Toby is not happy, or even remotely satisfied, with what he has achieved in his almost three decades of life, especially when forced to hear precisely that from his father over the occasional Sunday lunch. He knows it's time to get on with the rest of his life now, but the cost of big city living is so high that he fears he will never be able to afford anything as substantial as a home of his own. Then Toby makes an embarrassing, and very public, mistake that requires a little judge-ordered community service as payback - only to get the surprise of his life in the process.
More or less conned into humoring an old man in a nursing home, one whose company Toby utterly despises, Toby manages to "tune into" 1969 only to learn that he is almost certainly going to be trapped in the past for the rest of his own life. This is not a good thing. Toby is shocked by how primitive life can be without the internet, cell phones, social media, and the instant gratification they offer. Hopeless as Toby's former life felt to him, all he can think about now is a way of figuring out how to get back to it.
And then he falls in love...and realizes that the only way he can go home again is by changing the past. But does he really want to do that?
Tune Out is fun. It's not especially deep or philosophical, but there is enough meat here to make the reader think a little. This, in fact, is about as deep as this one gets (but no one can deny the truth expressed here):
"...there is no better or worse time to be alive - every generation has its challenges, and in every generation there are winners and losers. All you can do is make the best of the hand you're dealt; rather than blame the dealer."
If you're looking for some lighthearted entertainment, give this one a try.
(Available on Kindle Unlimited)
This does sound like a fun read. I had a good laugh at your 'primitive life' without internet, cell phones, and social media comment! :D Sometimes I'd like to go back to those days...but only sometimes.
ReplyDeleteIt always catches me by surprise when I'm reading some novel and the main character is looking all over the place for a pay phone. I find myself wondering where his cell phone is until I remember that the novel is set in 1975 or 1980. Way back in the old days...lol
DeleteIt's an interesting idea for a novel. We can tend to romanticize the past but I know I love the internet and also 1969 was a tumultuous time in the US and around the world. I quibble though with the passage that there is no worse time to be alive and also where you are born matters.
ReplyDeleteI would like to give Tuned Out a read.
I agree with your quibble...would have been kind of terrible to be born during the Plague years or in Western Europe 20 years before the trench warfare of WWI, etc.
DeleteI am definitely ready to give this a try. I would not mind being transported back to 1969 and seeing how that time is depicted by this author.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that it was kind of fun to see the world I experienced at that age through the eyes of a much younger author. He pretty much got it right, and since I didn't grow up in England where the novel is set, I can only think that the things that seemed a little too quaint for me to believe may have very well been that way in the U.K.
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