Ply, Hernan Diaz's first novel since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Trust, is both a touching story of a young woman's struggle to find security and peace in a dystopian future United States and a mind-bending reflection on the nature of time and space. Either story alone would be satisfying, but Diaz cleverly marries them in an intriguing union.
Ply is set in postliterate urban environment, several centuries after the collapse of the U.S. federal government. It features an unnamed, orphaned female protagonist who possesses a preternatural talent for "pinching," the practice of stealing modest amounts of energy from the electrical grid to charge "bricks" that serve both as batteries to power the concerts of her favorite bands and as a form of currency in the society's barter economy. The novel's second half focuses on an experiment hatched by an obsessive older physicist and inventor named Pola to "alter the fabric of reality itself." Pola has been stalking the pincher, convinced the younger woman has the talent to generate the massive energy required to power her jury-rigged collider, and she persuades her to enlist that expertise in the project.
Ply is a big, ambitious novel, but Diaz never loses sight of the pincher's personal drama and her palpable ache to be restored to something akin to the family she once knew. Some elements will appeal to avid science fiction readers and others to those who prefer fiction that illuminates character and human interaction. It's a radical departure in subject matter and style from Trust but unquestionably the product of a fertile imaginative intelligence. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer