Machine

A haunting story of guilt and blame in the wake of a drowning, Machine is Susan Steinberg's first novel. It is a dazzling and innovative leap forward for a writer whose most recent book, Spectacle, gained her a rapturous following.

Plot

The novel revolves around a group of teenagers, both locals and wealthy out-of-towners, during a single summer at the shore. Steinberg captures the pressures and demands of this world in a voice that effortlessly slides from collective to singular, as one girl recounts a night on which another girl drowned.

Hoping to assuage her guilt and evade a similar fate, she pieces together the details of this tragedy, as well as the breakdown of her own family. She learns that no one, not even she, is blameless.

Style

A daring stylist, Steinberg contrasts semicolon-studded sentences with short lines that race down the page. This restless approach gains focus and power through a sharply drawn narrative.

Themes

The novel ferociously interrogates:

• gender
• class
• privilege
• the disintegration of identity in the shadow of trauma