Amy and Ben have a marriage in which Amy works as a lawyer and Ben looks for a job. Only now he's keeping an eye on the robot. It calls itself Tang and doesn't work well or speak coherently. It looks pretty beat up and haphazard, not much use for domestic work, and it just sits in the garden. Amy thinks a proper new android would be useful, since she does much of the housework and cooking. But Tang is just in the way. After a row, Ben decides to take Tang to his makers in California for repair.

On the flights and road trip we see a lot of life with mobile mechanical assistants, including an android fetishists club - yes, it seems this is a book for adults - a Japanese karaoke bar and the offices of electronics firms. Ben also thinks back over his marriage, trying to recall happy days or to see what went wrong. We start to see household androids and robots as having a personality, maybe even an identity, of their own. And we ask ourselves how they should be treated. Looking after an inconvenient, sometimes uncooperative pile of ambulatory scrap and circuits starts to change Ben, in unexpected ways.

Deborah Install has clearly had fun in creating her story and giving her robot Tang a personality and a murky past. With some strong language and adult issues, this is a fine read for grown ups and those who don't want to grow up just yet. Deborah is a copywriter at a marketing and design agency, which in the future will presumably be marketing household help with chips and circuits. A ROBOT IN THE GARDEN will keep you amused. Just watch out for the oil leaks on the carpet.

Book Summary