Do you remember being born follows the life of 75 year old poet Marian Ffarmer who is invited to write a poem in collaboration with an AI Poetry Bot named Charlotte. Marian takes up the challenge and the $80,000 honorarium which would allow her to help her son Courney buy a house.

The oddity of the collaboration and Charlotte’s instantaneous expansive ability to generate “poetic” language makes Marian begin to doubt the project and her ability to produce a long poem in the requisite short period of time. This doubt seeps into her memories of motherhood and the impossibility she faced of being a poet and a mother at the same time.

Marian’s logistics are managed by her driver Rhoda, who remains unflappable despite the changing whims of her client. Rhoda drives her to a late night poetry event, joins her at a day at the zoo, brings her a blueberry smoothy to help with her hangover, and picks up an illicit collaborator Morell to help with the poem. In some undefined way Rhoda helps Marian progress and keep moving. “Proceed” is the button pushed to submit texts to Charlotte. Rhoda allowed Marian to Proceed.

Before I started the book I was skeptical that the voice of a 75 year old woman could be (adequately accurately aspirationally?) written by a male author. But after the first page this question slipped my mind. The challenges of a man passing as a woman was perhaps not unlike from the challenges of a machine passing as a human.

Although not a famous poet and not 75, I do feel out of synch with the cultural interest in AI, and uncomfortable by its potential intrusion in our lives. I do not share the curiosity of my coworkers who are looking to see how AI could make their work more efficient; how they can potentially offload their monotonous tasks to a hive mind.

I like the monotonous tasks, and the way they give my mind pause to consider other more complex projects.

This train of thought is a little far afield from the narrative, but also in keeping with Marian’s wandering memories and reappraisal of her life. A long way of saying that the book gives you a lot to think about. I give this book 4.5👍🏼 out of 5.