A few years ago, I read Joe Hill’s dark novel Horns and while I liked it overall, I thought the dark sides of people were just way too dark, that basically everyone had a horrific dark secret revealed by the mind-reading aspect. Revealing my mind wouldn’t show me hiding a murder or planning to abandon my family, just me keeping staying polite to a coworker or neighbor who I secretly find incredibly annoying.
So in Connie Willis’ Crosstalk, the mind-reading felt more relatable. When Briddey starts overhearing other people’s thoughts, she doesn’t overhear horrific secrets, just the mental desire to punch the guy holding up the line or a mental middle finger at the driver changing lanes without signaling. One guy’s secret internal monologue is freaking out 24/7 about potential layoffs, which all felt believable to me. These thoughts are kept internal for a reason, but they’re full of relatable frustrations, not evil.
Briddey agrees to an experimental procedure that will connect her mentally with her boyfriend, but after the surgery, she find she’s telepathic with her weird coworker, and then begins to overhear random thoughts all around her…
I didn’t love how much of the book is Briddey being a doormat. So many scenes are someone telling her something that doesn’t work for her, she starts saying why that won’t work, and then they just do it anyway. It was funny for her overbearing auntie, but her boyfriend, sisters, work contacts, basically everyone in her life just steamrolls her. This runs through the whole novel, starting with the experimental surgery. Briddey’s boyfriend insists they both have it, her family insists it’s too dangerous, and Briddey is kinda bobbing along with agency. A lot of the dramatic psychic battle could have been avoided by Briddey just declining to be tested and going home. I understand the point of this in the narrative — Briddey struggles with boundaries in life, so a mental link is much much more dangerous for her. But I still kept mentally telling her to just ghost her stupid boyfriend or stop picking up the phone or whatever.
Crosstalk has mostly great reviews, but the negative reactions I’ve seen mention that it’s too long and a bit rambly. That’s true, there are definitely scenes that don’t really advance the plot or really go anywhere, but that’s fine for me because I’m not reading to race towards the end of a novel. I enjoyed the rambles, and I enjoyed the world of telepathy and telepathic defense.