Sophia of Silicon Valley
A Novel
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Sharp, dramatic, and full of insider dish, SOPHIA OF SILICON VALLEY is one woman’s story of a career storming the corridors of geek power and living in the shadow of its outrageous cast of maestros.
During the heady years of the tech boom, incorrigibly frank Sophia Young lucks into a job that puts her directly in the path of Scott Kraft, the eccentric CEO of Treehouse, a studio whose animated films are transforming movies forever. Overnight, Sophia becomes an unlikely nerd whisperer. Whether her success is due to dumb luck, savage assertiveness, insightful finesse (learned by dealing with her irrational Chinese immigrant mother), or a combination of all three, in her rarified position she finds she can truly shine.
As Scott Kraft’s right-hand woman, whip-smart Sophia is in the eye of the storm, sometimes floundering, sometimes nearly losing relationships and her health, but ultimately learning what it means to take charge of her own future the way the men around her do. But when engineer/inventor Andre Stark hires her to run his company’s investor relations, Sophia discovers that the big paycheck and high-status career she’s created for herself may not be worth living in the toxic environment of a boys-club gone bad.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yen's disappointing debut takes readers back to the early days of the tech industry's rise. The daughter of successful Taiwanese immigrants, Sophia Young is hired as investor relations person at Treehouse, a groundbreaking computer-based animation studio founded by eccentric visionary Scott Kraft. Sophia, who still lives at home, is so dedicated to her new job that it eventually costs her the love of her boyfriend, Daniel, an environmental consultant. After a serious illness causes her to reassess her priorities, Sophia accepts a job from Andre Stark, an equally eccentric visionary and inventor of a radical new type of automobile. But will Sophia ever be able to reconcile her personal and professional lives? The author, whose background includes working at Pixar and Tesla, obviously knows the terrain but can't breathe life into the novel. Unfortunately, this familiar story of a woman coming into her own while working for a demanding boss falls flat.
