Deborah Install

One morning Ben and Amy find a robot in their garden. He somehow wandered in and he appears to have been damaged. And to top it all - he is a very old model and does not look like the androids that Amy had been talking about and wants to have. So she wants the robot gone - sent for recycling. Ben decides that he wants to keep Tang (as the robot introduces himself) and that adds more tension to a marriage which is on the rocks anyway.

Ben is drifting - his parents died six years earlier, his grief led to his dismissal from the veterinary school, his marriage is dissolving around him and he really sees no reason to do anything. Until Tang that is - for a reason that even he cannot explain, the little robot becomes the center of a recovery and even Amy leaving him does not change his new path. So off they go on a trip around the world to try to find some help for Tang - who appears to be in mortal danger from some of the damage he had sustained.

Ben starts the novel as a looser who blames everyone else for his issues and never fulfills his promises and ends it as a mature man who is ready for anything life throws at him. The almost comical elements (from the dog they meet to the megalomaniac villain that tries to kill them) are mixed with the story of an evolving father/son relationship (Tang behaves like a brat half of the time and as a toddler otherwise) and that combination should not work and yet, it somehow ends up working.

It is a cute novel that can be read as a metaphor for parenthood (and towards the end the author pushes a lot towards that) or as an adventure story. It is both things at the same time, despite some chunkiness and a somewhat uninspired middle. The end makes you smile though - because good wins against evil and all is good in the world (well, mostly).

The novel does not seem to have become very popular in English but the Japanese seem to have liked it enough to publish more volumes in the same series (the originals were never published in English from what I can see).… (more)

I really enjoyed this. Real talk - cheating (1 instance, not explicit), and forcible confinement (very briefly).

The robot is basically a child in this story. One that learns as he goes. It was delightful. Tantrums and all. The man is ... well, I'd be irritated to live with him, but he does his own learning as he goes as well. The woman, I'd also not want to live with, and I'm not sure how I feel about her own growing. I think she just tries to get back what she had because her other option didn't work out for her. The robot definitely makes this story.… (more)