And there is, in the end, a gigantic mystery that Green leaves wide open. There’s a race for ideological survival between optimists and isolationists. There’s an escape room-esque puzzle element that brings the whole of humanity together.

It’s safe to say that April’s world grows larger as An Absolutely Remarkable Thing progresses, and in so doing, the novel introduces deeply human themes. To go into more detail, though, would spoil the gut-punch of the Carls’ true meaning and how April, Andy and the world react. It’s a lot for Green to tackle, but this barely skims the novel’s premise. (Yes, that is Green as a special guest discussing online personas and authenticity, good eye.) Plus, obviously, Transformers as aesthetically badass loci of textual analysis and cultural criticism. In the novel’s case, this means a combination of hipsterish philosophizing on the role of art in our disruption-is-progress startup culture, a bit of YouTubers Are Not Your Friends 101 and an existential breakdown over manufacturing authenticity (for art and for fun).

In 2018’s case, this means being Extremely Online.

Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and Where’d You Go, Bernadette? before it, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing keys into the precise nodes of modern (white, upper middle class, culture-obsessed) anxiety. And being The Face, it turns out, is…challenging. The pair has gone viral, and they’re so in demand that April is able to quit her job within days. When she wakes up, the world has changed: Carl sculptures have appeared all over the world, and while people everywhere have been documenting them since their sudden arrival, April and Andy’s video was the first to break the story.

She dubs the robot sculpture Carl, conducts a faux-serious interview with it and then goes home, leaving Andy to edit and post the video on his own. April is ambivalent to be on camera, but Andy insists that her visible arty-ness will be more believable, so she agrees. She calls up her YouTube-savvy friend, Andy, who races across the city to meet her and get the scoop on the installation before anyone else. But with his debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Hank Green pulls it off.Īn Absolutely Remarkable Thing’s synopsis reads like your average, of-the-cultural-moment romp: Protagonist April May, recently graduated from an art school and languishing in a job at an “aggressively shitty” startup, stumbles upon a 10-foot-tall metal sculpture that looks like a cross between a Transformer and a samurai. It’s not in the nature of a sci-fi comedy blockbuster to shift boulders in your soul.

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