Q&A with Deb Caletti, author of True Life in Uncanny Valley
In conversation with Deb Caletti, author of True Life in Uncanny Valley
With a few well-placed lies, Eleanor lands a summer job as a nanny to her secret half-brother. What is her motivation?
Eleanor’s father is Hugo Harrison, a charismatic, beloved billionaire and the creator of a hugely popular AI art app, as well as a highly anticipated, top-secret new release. Everyone seems to know him except Eleanor herself. In her house, Hugo is the enemy, and she doesn’t dare even try. But when she gets this chance to experience life with Hugo, his glamorous wife, Aurora, and her little brother . . . she has to do it. Even if it means betraying Team Mom with increasingly catastrophic lies.
In the past, you’ve said that all your books are personal. What connects you to Eleanor’s story?
At its heart, the story is about narcissism and how it plays from the smallest private arena—the family—to the largest, societal ones. We’ve all been increasingly witnessing narcissism’s effects in the wider world, but many of us, me included, have either experienced a narcissistic family dynamic or watched it play out with someone close. Eleanor’s dad’s ego is the story’s showiest, but her golden sister and mom’s exclusionary relationship is what pains her most. Unfortunately, many kids will relate.
The rise of AI is dominating headlines. What inspired you to use this timely topic as a jumping off point for Eleanor’s story?
A large part of narcissism is the inability to see others. Not truly seeing others has been an ugly truth for generations, but lately, there seems to be an ever-growing epidemic of it, and certain uses of AI reflect that. When we don’t acknowledge the original makers of art, we aren’t seeing other. When we steal an artist’s deep and personal creation and use it to train AI, we aren’t seeing other. We’re also not seeing ourselves—how our creativity is part of what makes us most human. In the book, I mention other seemingly outlandish tech, too, that zeroes in on our humanity. But it’s all based in truth either here now or currently being researched.
In True Life in Uncanny Valley, Eleanor faces a question that technology can’t answer: What is your true self, and how do you know when you find her? What answer do you hope readers will take away with them?
Mostly that you may or may not be an artist like Eleanor, but you—with your compassion and empathy, your creativity, vision, and unique light—you hold the pen to your own life story.
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True Life in Uncanny Valley By Deb Caletti
From the acclaimed author of A Heart in a Body in the World comes the gripping story of a girl living a lie in order to find the truth about her family and herself.
Eleanor, like so many others, is used to watching her famous father from afar. To the world, Hugo Harrison is the brilliant and charismatic tech genius whose AI inventions seem to create a new, better reality. But to Eleanor, whose mother had an affair with Hugo years ago, he is something even more intriguing, and dangerous—a secret.
When Eleanor’s spying leads her to a posting for a live-in summer nanny job for Hugo's young son—her half-brother—she knows she has to apply. This is finally her chance to learn about her father, his family, and the life that could have been hers. She only has to do one thing: become someone else. With just a few well-placed lies, Eleanor is catapulted into an unfamiliar, intoxicating whirlwind of money and ego, and into a new romance with a cute boy who works for Hugo. But in a place where image is everything and reality can be rewritten, is anything real—even the Harrisons themselves?
Caught between her own secrets and the ones she’s uncovering about her father and his latest invention, Eleanor faces a question that technology can't answer: what is your true self, and how do you know when you find her?
