Chat
Book One
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
In the days before Facebook, Skype, and Twitter…
Two strangers begin a conversation online. It’s 1995, and the Internet is new and uncharted territory. No status updates, no photos, no tweets, no video chats. All they have to share with one another are their words.
Max, a restless advertising copywriter who’s new to the online world, boldly strikes up an email conversation with Bev, a tough-minded book editor who’s been online since the ’80s. With charm, wit, and persistence, Max chips away at Bev’s reluctant façade until the two are sharing secrets they wouldn’t dream of telling anyone in “real life.”
Hailed as “Silicon Valley’s Story of O,” the story of Bev and Max’s relationship gradually becomes more intense, unfolding entirely through their online messages. Since Chat’s first publication in 1995, readers have found themselves unable to resist the temptation to “eavesdrop” on Bev and Max’s increasingly intimate correspondence as she slowly opens up to him and he becomes more fascinated by her.
This newest edition of the acclaimed Chat, Connect, and Crash series offers a snapshot of the emerging technology and online culture of the 1990s, but the story of Bev and Max is—above all else—timeless.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McCarthy's isn't the first e-mail epistolary novel (though it was rather newer when she self-published it in 1995), but it is better than most. By clever combinations of e-mail, live chat, emoticons and computer shortcuts, she gives the headstrong-girl-meets-self-sufficient-boy story a refreshing twist. Bev (BevJ@frederic_gerard.com) and Max (Maximilian@miller&morris.com) meet in a chat group called Writer's Forum, after which Max e-mails her, asking about jobs. The married Bev is understandably leery of starting a correspondence with someone she imagines to be yet another loser cyberloon, but soon finds him to be neither a loser nor a loon and, in fact, rather charming. Then comes the computer show, Macworld, which, in this context (and probably only in this context) turns out to be a catalyst in their relationship. The novel begins a little awkwardly, with the computer-literate Bev stopping to explain online acronyms (there is both a glossary and a schematic of emoticons at the book's end) and the writing, perhaps purposefully, never transcends serviceable e-mail patter. Still, McCarthy does convey the freedom of electronic anonymity, and the resulting novel, if slight, is a perfectly enjoyable way to spend a few minutes.
