Expectations [Paperback]

Kit Reed (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Forge Books (2000)
• ASIN: B000OTUMR8
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Kit Reed's new short story collection, "What Wolves Know," just out from PS Publishing ( Spring 2011), includes stories originally published in venues ranging from Asimov's SF to the Kenyon Review and the Yale Review.

Called "a gripping dystopian thriller" in a starred review in Publishers Weekly, Kit Reed's novels, Enclave, The Baby Merchant and Thinner Than Thou a winner of the A.L.A. Alex Award, and her collection, Dogs of Truth, are available in trade paperback. The New York Times Book Review has this to say about her work: "Most of these stories shine with the incisive edginess of brilliant cartoons... they are less fantastic than visionary." Other novels include @​expectations, Captain Grownup, Fort Privilege, Catholic Girls, J. Eden and Little Sisters of the Apocalypse. As Kit Craig she is the author of Gone, Twice Burned and other psychological thrillers published here and in the UK. A Guggenheim fellow, she is the first American recipient of an international literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation. She's had stories in, among others, The Yale Review, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Literature. Her books Weird Women, Wired Women and Little Sisters of the Apocalypse were finalists for the Tiptree Prize.

A member of the board of the Authors League Fund, she serves as Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lighten up ...it's only a game!, December 24, 2000

By 

Denise Bentley "Kelsana" (The California Redwoods) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: @Expectations (Hardcover)

This book is based on the concept of "Performative utterance" or "What we say...is". Translated to the world of computers, "You are what you type". To anyone who has spent time on the net chatting or in a virtual reality called a MUD (multiple user domain), this book will tickle your fancy. I have to give the author credit for a unique book and story line.

StElene's is the virtual world run by Suntum International. It is here that Reed takes us into the psyche of an array of characters that are diversified and interesting. We watch them manage their RL (real life), along with their VL (virtual life). Jenny AKA Zan to her friends on StElene's has become addicted to her on line lover, Reverdy. Stretched thin by night after night spent on the computer till dawn, she starts to confuse her worlds. This confusion, and what she finds herself driven to do is the substance that keeps you turning the pages.

I did enjoy this book enough to give it 3 stars, but I found the dialogue repetitive and sometimes found myself skimming over whole paragraphs. Worth the read if you have extra time. 12/23/00

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Virtual Reality?, December 12, 2000

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: @Expectations (Hardcover)

What was I expecting from this book? To be honest, I expected a modern romance about two people falling in love in cyberspace. It turns out that @expectations isn't what I, well, expected. This irresistibly dark novel explores the strange and vague world of chat rooms. In this virtual world, people fall in love, betray each other, destroy lives, reinvent themselves. Which makes me wonder: isn't the term "virtual reality" contradictory?

Kit Reed illustrates just how surreal life on the Internet can be. Reed introduces Jenny, a wife and stepmother whose life becomes unbearable. In order to please her husband-to-be, Jenny moves from New York City to a suburban area in South Carolina. Depressed, she finds comfort in an online community known as StElene. Jenny, the unsatisfied wife, becomes Zan, a virtual princess who finds her knight in shining armor. No sooner does she enter this world than she meets Reverdy. They embark on a relationship that becomes more meaningful than her marriage. Soon Jenny and Zan's lives collide. Will she able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality?

This is one of the most original novels that I have ever read. I marvel at Reed's attention to detail. @expectations is not a sugarcoated love story. It is thought provoking and intense. You will certainly think twice about romance in cyberspace.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Internet users are going to have fun with this one, August 29, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: @Expectations (Hardcover)

Jenny knows she loves her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Wilder, but has problems relating with his two children, Rusty and Patsy, from his first marriage. Worse, on the Manhattan mind of Jenny is being marooned in Brevert, South Carolina where her patients bore her with their southern tales of woe. More and more Jenny feels hopeless and trapped. She wonders if this is all there is too life? Her deep melancholy always surfaces when her marine spouse is deployed or on an exercise.

Jenny escapes into the chat room where she becomes the wild and free Zan. Relishing life to the fullest at the offshore island of StElene, each evening Zan meets her online lover, Reverby, who makes her soul sing. Over time the line between her life with Charlie and her "affair" with Reverby blurs. She struggles to separate the two and begins to lean more towards disappearing into the virtual world where life is enjoyable and fun instead of the mundane reality of responsibility.

Needing a warning label that chat room lovers beware the intrusion of reality, @EXPECTATIONS is a great modernization of the love triangle. The third party being an online figure turns the relationships into a combination of real and virtual. The story line centers on Jenny's two lives converging, with the sad refrain that she believes the virtual is better than the real. Think Supertramp's Logical Song and you have Jenny trying to recapture what she feels she lost. The plot works because the talented Kit Reed makes Jenny's descent seem genuine and plausible.

Harriet Klausner