Friday
by Robert A. Heinlein
Published:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982
Awards
Nominated: Nebula, Hugo, Locus SF, and Prometheus Awards
The
Book:
“Friday
is her name... She is as thoroughly resourceful as she is strikingly
beautiful. She is one of the best interplanetary agents in the
business. And she is an Artificial Person... the ultimate glory of
genetic engineering.
Friday
is a secret courier. She is employed by a man known to her only as
"Boss." Operating from and over a near-future Earth, in
which North America has become Balkanized into dozens of independent
states, where culture has become bizarrely vulgarized and chaos is
the happy norm, she finds herself on shuttlecock assignment at Boss's
seemingly whimsical behest.
From
New Zealand to Canada, from one to another of the new states of
America's disunion, she keeps her balance nimbly with quick,
expeditious solutions to one calamity and scrape after another.
Desperate for human identity and relationships, she is never sure
whether she is one step ahead of, or one step behind, the ultimate
fate of the human race.” ~WWEnd.com
Heinlein
is always kind of hit and miss for me, and I have to say this book
was kind of both. My husband and I listened to this one
together as an audiobook. There are some spoilers in the review
below.
My
Rating: 2 /5
Friday
has
a lot of the social quirks I expect from a Heinlein novel, and it
ended up being a weird combination of things I enjoyed and things
that annoyed the crap out of me. It was fun following Friday as she
skips from one exciting spy situation to the next, and it seemed for
a while that her story was going to be about uncovering some events
that are causing upheaval in the fractured future US. I was
really getting into this plot arc, but it was dropped without
resolution later in the book. On a character level, I initially liked
reading about Friday’s efforts to find a place for herself in the
world. I especially enjoyed the subplot about her New Zealand family,
which addressed both her desire to belong and the unpleasantness of
finding out loved ones hold bigoted beliefs.
The
parts I didn’t enjoy include a gang rape scene (which Friday was
weirdly blasé about) and some occasional bizarre gender stereotypes
that were presented as if they were commonplace. It wasn’t so much
misogynistic stereotypes, as it was stuff that just seemed
nonsensical. For example, “there is no stronger aphrodisiac
than a woman’s tears.” Was that actually a thing in the 80s? I’m
not even offended, just confused. The plot also didn’t flow like a
traditional narrative, and not in a way that felt well planned. I
guess was expecting the smaller parts to build into a coherent story,
but instead it was just a collection of slice-of-life short stories
about Friday. This means that a lot of subplots are randomly
dropped, and some short stories are much more interesting than
others. On a last note, I am also not a fan of Heinlein’s “all
women desperately want to have kids and fulfill traditional gender
roles” kick, which is on display by the end of the book.
x
