Speak is a devastating exploration of humanity’s eternal struggle to communicate across the chasms that separate us, and a mesmerizing examination of the tenuous divide between man and machine. A puritan girl travels to the New World with her unwanted husband, confiding all of her hopes and fears into a diary. Alan Turing, renowned mathematician and codebreaker, writes heartfelt correspondence to his best friend’s mother, divulging his determination to create a machine that mimics the human mind. A Jewish refugee and computer science professor struggles to reconnect with his increasingly distant wife, reflecting on their relationship and the growing rift between them. A former Silicon Valley wunderkind, imprisoned for creating illegally lifelike dolls, composes his memoir from behind bars. And a young girl, confined to her bedroom, exchanges messages with an artificially intelligent software program, revealing the trauma that left her incapacitated. Though speaking from distinct places and moments in time, these five voices each yearn to express themselves and connect with the world around them, while simultaneously wondering if they will ever truly be heard.  

A former squash player and pre-medical student, Louisa Hall studied the genetics of psychiatric disorders at Albert Einstein hospital before deciding to pursue a degree in literature. “I’ve always been interested in how the human brain works,” she explains. “Once I started researching the history of A.I., I became intrigued by the real characters involved, from Alan Turing, who predicted the future of computers, to Joseph Weizenbaum, who created the first conversational program, to Caleb Chung, the co-creator of the Furby. As I continued to research, my own fictional cast of characters started to develop. Characters who, for various reasons, are attempting to communicate across gaps—to reach future readers, estranged spouses, lost friends, a more accepting world, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. It seemed to me that the gaps in perception between a computer and a human only echoed the gaps that can exist between people. The frustrations involved with trying to communicate across such divides were what held my interest throughout the process of writing the book.”