Hello, World! - by Karisa Tell (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"This book possessed me." --Melissa Albert, author of The Children

Hello, World! introduces a high-flying, high concept debut from a major new voice that reads like if David Mitchell wrote Greta Gerwig's Barbie.

A perfect reality. A broken family. The secrets that will unravel everything.

World was created to be a perfect virtual reality, a simulated shelter from the devastation of the real world. Enter your Preferences, say goodbye to your own reality, and plug in. Here, you can choose every detail. You can manufacture the right house, the right weather, the right life. If you hate rain, make every day sunny. You can banish mushrooms and pumpernickel bread from your world altogether, or even make all food taste like dessert. The price? You must leave everything behind. No ties, no memories, no baggage. When you wake up in World, you are free.

Aleta Seppala is living what ought to be an idyllic life inside World with her husband and daughter--every Preference accounted for, proof of what a well-crafted reality can offer. But one day, she disappears without a trace, leaving a grieving family and community behind.

Elliane Seppala grows up believing that her mother abandoned her. Her father, Ted, thinks his wife was taken, and he suspects his friend and business partner. Their misery and loneliness aren't supposed to be possible, not here. Not in World.

When Elliane meets a mysterious stranger who claims to know exactly what happened to Aleta, she begins to suspect that World might be falling apart, glitch by glitch. As Preferences collapse and the increasing chaos threatens to destroy everything that matters, Elliane finds herself running out of time to solve the mystery that has clouded her heart for the better part of her life.

Deliciously escapist and wrenchingly profound, Hello, World! asks whether we're hardwired to repeat mistakes and what happens when we get everything we ever thought we wanted.

Review Quotes

"What a captivating, deeply clever, wonderfully strange book. I loved it. I read it slowly over the course of a week and by the end found myself honestly considering the possibility that I was living in a simulation. This book possessed me." --Melissa Albert, New York Times bestselling author of The Children

"An ambitious symphony of voices and worldbuilding . . . With a simulation that recalls Snow Crash's metaverse, and virtual worlds like Second Life, Tell's Hello, World! makes something new and haunting. The novel deftly critiques the value of preferences, choice, religions, and even happiness, while exploring if true relationships can be made in simulated worlds, with simulated people. It's a pleasure to let the world of World wash over you, and to be left wondering what makes reality." --Erika Swyler, bestselling author of The Book of Speculation

"A little bit Vonnegut and a little bit Sim City, Hello, World! asks big questions about truth, existence, humanity, and how our beliefs shape our worlds--both real and digital--and has a lot of fun getting at the answers." --Daria Lavelle, author of Aftertaste

"A clever, funny, phantasmagoric ride into a world that is both ours and not, Hello, World! asks us who and what we are when we get exactly what we want. How could we ever know what that is, really? What would we give up, risk, to touch and feel the terrifying fact of loving wholly as ourselves if and when we realized that it might be lost? Beautifully written and deeply felt, this is a wonderful book!" --Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight

About the Author

Karisa Tell received her MA from the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee, and currently lives in Milwaukee. Hello, World! is her debut novel.