Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

What I loved: the action that kicks off the entire plotline - inadvertently reading a word incorrectly that completely changes the main character's past, present, and future.

What I didn't care for: lots (LOTS) of stream of consciousness writing here; I think this book should be read two or three times to appreciate the whole story, and I wish I had that kind of time. It IS one I'll go back and re-read, but probably not until a year has gone by.

Incredibly clever writing, in spite of my qualm above, and an additional exploration of that part of the mind that plays the "what-might-have-been" game.

Zing, zing, zing...this novel gripped me in exactly the way I love in a book. Every sentence was like an exquisite story all by itself. I guess I don't need conventional plot to be completely captivated, when a story feels so true. I loved it.

I admit what attracted me to this book was 20% the interesting premise and 80% the setting and the fact that it's written by a Norwegian author. Unfortunately Present Tense Machine wasn't quite what I expected it to be. It's not quite sci-fi, but it's also not a family drama - it's a little bit of both.

On a literary level I can absolutely see that it holds value, but from a purely entertainment point of view it left me confused and perplexed most of the time. I suspect this has either to do with the execution or the translation, but I felt it could have offered so much more. Mostly it just feels like drifting from one scene to another without any focus. And sure, if you enjoy a novel with no clear plot, resolution or explanation, you'd happily enjoy this experimental fiction.

At most these are snapshots of people's lives in parallel universes. There's a certain melancholy and longing throughout and the author was successful in conjuring up these feelings throughout. In the end I was left somewhat discontent - either because I missed something important or that it had so much potential which wasn't fulfilled.

This doesn't quite land for me. I can see and appreciate what the author is trying to do but I think I found it to be just a little too confusing to keep up with and just a little too pretentious. I enjoyed the Satie sections especially but I feel certain this book has lost some of its luster in translation.

Didn't looooove this book but it's far from being a bad one. It's a fascinating, albeit a little confusing at first, story about family, language and loss. One's presence in another's life is as meaningful and impactful as their absence, and often an absence hits much harder, especially one that cannot be explained. There are things I wish had been different but overall it was a good, interesting read that I'm still thinking about.

Beautiful and beguiling thought experiment on language and the fabric of the universe. It’s almost impossible to describe, and I won’t try. If you’re not a fan of walking away from a book without answers, this isn’t for you.

I have to keep reminding myself that this novel is art, presumably for art’s sake, and not a treatise on the nature of reality. It reads like a fever dream with white noise. But not in an unpleasant way.

It’s funny how the universe synchs. I’ve just watched two films about parallel realities and considered writing a book myself that deals with the topic. To be honest, I’m now a bit concerned about my existential health.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my free copy. These opinions are my own.

In the late 1980s, Anna is reading and watching her daughter play in their garden in Norway. The, in a moment, everything changes. Anna misreads a letter, creates an alternate universe, and her daughter disappears.
About twenty years later, life has continued for both Anna and Laura. It seems as if nothing had ever happened. After all, they don’t remember anything about each other. They moved on and the parallels in their lives are uncanny. They are both writers, amateur pianists, they are married. Anna has two other children and Laura is expecting her first child. Yet, in the life of both women something always seems to be off, like the reality they live in is not quite complete.

When I read the premise for “Present Tense Machine”, I was immediately intrigued. I had never read anything closed to it before, so I decided to give it a try. The whole idea of the importance of language was beautifully explored in the novel. I loved that the central idea of the novel was that words can shape the world, and often are able to transport us to different realities.

I found the writing to be very close to stream of consciousness, and at times it had an almost hypnotical, or even magical quality about it. It not only pulled me into the story, but it was almost like I was also wandering between alternate universes. This is also a short book, which helps to maintain that dreamlike quality of the writing and of the story, without breaking it at any point. However, I do have to say that if I wasn’t completely focused on the novel, I had to go back and read the sentence, if not the entire page, from the beginning. This, I think, can become a problem for a lot of readers.

Thank you to @netgalley and @fsgbooks for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

An unusual conceit- that the misreading of a single word can zap (I can't think of a better word) of a mother and daughter into parallel universes where neither is aware of the existence of the other. Anna goes on with her life when 2 year old Laura vanishes and Laura grows up independently. Now. twenty years later, well, over to the reader. This one left me a bit baffled. The writing or perhaps the translation was a bit challenging but it's a slim volume that does pack interesting concepts. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. It wasn't for me but fans of literary fiction should give it a try.

The premise was unique and intriguing. The concept of living in a parallel world due to a misread word was quite an odd story. The characters are lovable, funny, and relatable. This book was a breeze to read. I love that it piques my curiosity up until the end.

The story follows Anna, a writer, and an amateur pianist, who misread a word in a poem that vanished Laura, her two-year-old daughter. Twenty years later, Laura, living in a parallel world, is expecting a child of her own. Both went on with their lives but felt that something was lost.

The story is character-driven and realistic. It is more of magical realism rather than a sci-fi theme. The topics about the evolution of language were very informative and engaging.

I'm grateful to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I found this book quite fascinating as it took you between both worlds of Anna and Laura. I work with young adults who I feel would really enjoy this take on what would happen if your life was split in the way Anna and Laura’s was. The authors use of their imagination made me feel this was real. I thoroughly enjoyed reading and will set it as a group read with my students.

The first word that came to my mind from the first 10 pages when I start reading this book, was STRANGE. After reading more pages other words came too, like weird, what, odd, how, unusual, hmmm!!!

Sunday afternoon in 1998, when Anna was 23 years old, Laura was playing on her tricycle out on the lawn. Anna kept an eye on Laura as she read, then Laura disappeared and none of them could remember. It likes there wasn't a time they were together. A misread word, words have power and cause the consequences.

"The people were one people and had one language, and decided to build a tower so tall that it reach up to heaven, And they would themselves a name... in other words: up to where God resides, and they want to create a new name for themselves up there, in other words, they come into being through the word, the word was with God, and the word was God, and if the people built a tower that reached all the way up … and created themselves through language … they would then be able to create everything else …"

Anna is 44 years old lives with two children and her husband. Laura is 24 years old and pregnant, they live in parallel universes, not knowing each other only remembering the sense of loss, knowing that lost something but couldn't remember what.

This was a fictional story in parallel worlds and families who try to protect each other, recommend it to unusual fiction readers.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for giving me a chance to read Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug, translated by Kari Dickson, I have given my honest review.

I was given an ARC copy of Present Tense Machine in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel - it is a fabulous read and I can’t praise it highly enough! As an avid fan of James Smythe, I found this book to be a captivating read. I must admit that it took me a little longer than usual to finish it as I had to keep reviewing what I had read to make sense of it but was well worth it. Intelligently written, the novel teases with the essence of misrepresentation of language and confusion in sensing something is ‘missing’ or not quite right but are never able to qualify the feeling. The book begins with the disappearance of a 2 year old from the garden in which she is playing and only understood by her parents as some kind of a weird void. WOW!! An amazing read!

2.5 rounded down

An example of a fantastic premise not being developed or delivered in the way this reader wanted or expected. Present Tense Machine follows Anna, a young woman who one day misreads a word. in a novel and her two year old daughter disappears. Except Laura and Anna's lives do both continue, and they live separate lives, totally ignorant of the knowledge that the other ever existed. Yet as the novel develops we see that there are many parallels between the women's lives and experiences - although I should add that this is not a plot driven book, which the characters themselves taking centre stage.

Unfortunately I found the novel to be too patchy: there were moments and lines I found profound and brilliant and then I'd be confused as to what was going on for the next several pages. I'd be interested to try the author's next novel, but it's regrettable that this one didn't fully work for me.

Mostly enjoyed this. The ending was not satisfying but the writing was nice. Could have done without the statements ending chapters. Yes we get it, this is the end of the chapter. The story had promise but it fizzled out.

This was OK. I'm glad it wasn't padded like many stories. It is a strange story, but had a few compelling moments. It's a tough story to pull-off well, and it didn't quite work. I hope the author keeps writing!

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!

In this bold conceit, the author uses a quantum possibility to launch the parallel stories of a mother and daughter whose connection runs deep despite the lack of awareness of each other's existence. The book technically qualifies as science fiction, but that aspect is overshadowed by the acrobatic overlay of two compelling stories. Oyehaug is deft managing two distinct story lines without sacrificing cohesion, connection, nuance or detail in the telling. She simultaneously tells two separate stories, layering them together in a venn diagram focused on their shared essence.

As a mother who's lost her adult daughter in an exceptionally painful and shocking way, I was tethered to the story. I couldn't help but imagine this chimerical possibility for keeping her alive, even as we would be unaware of each other's continuing existence. Twelve years after losing my precious girl, the pain and longing for her remains a permanent condition in my life. Imagining an alternative reality in which she could still be living and realizing her audacious dreams has taken hold of my grief for now. Bittersweet at best, the book's oblique construct kindles hope for believing she's not entirely gone.

One day, some weirdness happens, and a toddler is taken from this world and dropped off in a parallel world. Though nobody can remember this, there remains a strong sense of loss.

This is literary fiction and it feels like magical realism, but I am not sure if that term also applies to the more sci fi side of things. The characters are very three dimensional, and the plot is very focused on a small cast of people. Very characterdriven, too.

The writing borders on stream of consciousness, and we have very long sentences. Speech is not indicated by any symbols, and you can find two utterances by different people in on sentence.
As I already mentioned earlier, this kind of writing is very inaccessible to neurodiverse folk, and already I feel like I can't tell you specific things. What remains with me is more a general idea of how I felt while reading this.

This leads me to believe that this book, though beautifully done, will only appeal to a specific set of readers. If you think you belong to them, give this a go!

The arc was provided by the publisher.

Unique well written intriguing ,a book that drew me right in.The characters came alive each time line each story was involving .Iwill ll be recommending this novel truly unusual theme.#netgalley #fsg

Present Tense Machine is a book that is, in many ways, hard to review. Its premise was intriguing, and I loved the idea that language could have the effect of creating alternate realities. However, I always felt a little disconnected from the characters and their lives as I was reading, due to the style of the narration, and perhaps that was intentional on the part of author, to keep the reader in a sense of unreality and disconnection similar to that of the characters, but it didn't quite work for me personally. Overall, I would say that, while I appreciated what the author set out to achieve with this book, its style didn't draw me in, and I think it will be one of those texts that some readers will take to while others struggle with it. I am giving it 3.5 stars. It was certainly interesting on several levels, but it's not a book I see myself wanting to reread in the future as it never touched me deeply.