Exactly how steamy is this story?
R
Eggers has no problem sharing TMI about Alan's sex life/attempted sex life/total failure of a sex life.
While Alan struggles with low sex drive throughout the novel, there's always the past to remember and several attempts to, um, rev his engines. So in this work, you'll encounter:
- Descriptions of ex-wife Ruby's "mad orgasms"—and how Alan helped her achieve them
- Descriptions of Hanne's bathtub orgasm—and how Alan helped her achieve that
- Zahra Hakem's breasts (underwater) and unlikely make out scene (also underwater)
- Some very clumsy doin' it
Sex, for Alan, is just another way for him to fail and another indicator of his emotional deadness. Sexual arousal doesn't make him feel more fully human or more fulfilled. In fact, it confirms to him that the Singularity is approaching, since the whole process smacks of "automation":
[…] we were so much like robots already, programmed and easy to manipulate. We had buttons, we had circuits, and it could all be mapped and explained, reprogrammed and calibrated. The utter mechanical simplicity of being able to move this oddity, the clitoris, up and down and around, to provoke the greatest pleasure, seemed laughably easy. (XXII.115.190-191)
We're not sure if any of this counts as "steamy," but it's all probably something you wouldn't discuss in front of Grandma. Unless Grandma is super chill. Which, hey: she might be.