“She’s seen the Earth from above. She’s traveling through an undiscovered universe, on her way to a place no human has touched. And when they arrive, she will create a new world, a good world,” (Willis 312).
Amber Kivinen is going to Mars. Maybe. If she wins the hit new reality TV show MarsNow she’ll be heading out of orbit, and leaving her boyfriend Kevin of fourteen years Earth-bound. Amber competes with twenty-three other contestants all with a seemingly higher skill set than her own, while Kevin sits in their Vancouver basement apartment, caring for their marijuana plants and getting high, convinced that Amber will come back to him. Each has their own goal: reaching for the stars and staying grounded, which one will end up successful?
Girlfriend on Marssounded like it was going to be a fun read, and I think the cover highlights that point. But honestly, the book was disappointing. It’s well-written, I enjoyed finding out what was going to happen to both Amber and Kevin, but like many reviewers have said the book went on for too long. The plot was fairly straight-forward and it was obvious where the story was going to go, but Willis just kept it going anyways. Willis also has trouble getting the tone right. There are some funny parts, but then some serious which makes it fail as a satire. Amber and Kevin both want to save the world which means shaming others for not going vegan/vegetarian and eating sugar even though Amber consistently breaks these promises on MarsNow with weak excuses as to why. It means fighting for climate change recognition while saying that the people of the world are too distracted and uncaring by social media to care about the real issues while they get sucked into the social media frenzy of MarsNow. And this was was most likely all purposely done, but it wasn’t done well. I know satire is a hard thing to write successfully, but Willis really missed the tone with her debut which makes it hard to know if reader’s should take the story seriously or laugh along with the characters antics.
Amber and Kevin are both pretty unlikable characters, and usually I’m a fan of unlikable protagonists. I don’t think that main characters should have to be likable for a story to be good, but if they are unlikable they have to be intriguing enough in some way so that reader’s will want to follow their stories despite their flaws. That doesn’t happen here, Amber and Kevin are just two unlikable, codependent people with serious flaws. I disliked Amber more than Kevin which seems to be the rarity in terms of reviews. Maybe I have a soft spot because Kevin’s mother died ten years prior to the start of the story and he was still grieving, and I’m always sympathetic about characters who are grieving, but it was shocking how few characters actually acknowledged that he was depressed and grieving (even more so after Amber leaves for MarsNow) and instead viewed him as being a lazy slacker. Now Kevin isn’t entirely blameless, he never goes to counselling or receives help for his grief and did have to act as caretaker to his sick mother (which I also had an issue with. Caretaking isn’t easy and there is a lot of burnouts among caretakers, but I hate the narrative of caretakers being resentful of the disabled/chronically ill people in their life) does blame others for his own lack of success as a writer and appears uninterested in doing anything more than staying inside all day and taking care of the marijuana plants (but again, isolating from people while grieving is not unheard of).
Amber, on the other hand, is just horrible. She’s unhappy in her life, blames Kevin for it and only stays with him because he is a safe option but tries to get out of the relationship by consistently cheating on him. They always kiss and make-up though, as codependents will do, neither willing to get out of the relationship because they’ve been dating for fourteen years, since they were eighteen. Amber thinks she’s better than everyone: Kevin, her sister (whom she calls fat and seems to blame that on her lack of success in life), her mother, most of her MarsNow competitors. She has a God-complex, which was interesting considering she’s a lapsed Evangelical Christian, and this part of her character was probably one of the most interesting that explained a lot of her motivations but didn’t really hit as hard as it should have.
But here’s where it gets complicated.
Girlfriend on Marsis told in the alternating perspectives of Kevin and Amber. Kevin’s chapters are written in first person, Amber’s in third. It’s a weird choice because Kevin’s are also written like he’s talking to the reader and Amber’s third person narration distances her from them, most likely intentional since Amber is the character literally competing to go to Mars. But as some reviewers have theorized, the explanation for this point of view choice could mean that Amber’s chapters are, in reality, written by Kevin in an attempt to understand her better. This can change our opinions of the characters because it means Kevin purposely wrote Amber in a negative light which makes him a worse character and Amber more sympathetic, but aside from a vague quote about how Kevin should write about Amber, there’s no actual confirmation of this.
I personally think the book only needed the one point of view, that with some edits to Kevin’s characters Willis could have narrated the whole thing from Kevin’s perspective as he watched MarsNow and attempted to understand Amber more by watching the show. The reality TV show parts were interesting from Amber’s chapters, the “unscripted” parts especially, but if Kevin was the sole narrator then reader’s would be completely cut off from Kevin and have to learn Amber’s motivation for space travel the same way Kevin does.
Girlfriend on Marsis well-written, despite knowing how the story was going to unfold I enjoyed reading it, but it really needed another edit. The tone needed to be clearer and the protagonists intriguing enough to continue with despite their flaws. An intriguing concept on reality TV, the climate crisis, and our role in it that just doesn’t do any of these topics properly.
Publication:June 13 2023
Publisher:W.W. Norton & Company
Pages: 368 pages (paperback ARC)
Source:OLA
Genre:Fiction, Satire, Literary, Science Fiction
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
Amber Kivinen is moving to Mars. Or at least, she will be if she wins a chance to join MarsNow. She and twenty-three reality TV contestants from around the world—including a hunky Israeli soldier, an endearing fellow Canadian, and an assortment of science nerds and wannabe influencers—are competing for two seats on the first human-led mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task. Meanwhile Kevin, Amber’s boyfriend of fourteen years, was content going nowhere until Amber left him—and their hydroponic weed business—behind. As he tends to the plants growing in their absurdly overpriced Vancouver basement apartment, Kevin tunes in to find out why the love of his life is so determined to leave the planet with somebody else.
