"The startup wife" by Tahmima Anam

An audio book

The first-person protagonist, Asha, is the daughter of Islamic Bengali immigrants in New York. She's a nerd, and was at school with a wackier nerd, Cyrus, who is a spiritual guide (a celebrant). After meeting years later they marry within days. She gives up her Cambridge (US) Ph.D to move back with her parents and develop a platform around her "empathy module" work - bringing together people by what gives their lives meaning, and offering rituals. The behaviour's based rather on Cyrus. They start a company called WAI (pronounced "WHY", standing for We Are Infinite") with their friend Jules. She has to worry about nudge theory and pitches. She gets mistaken for the company's eye-candy at pitches. Cyrus is happy being spokesman. He sounds like the program's output. They get venture capital, launch, employ people to check content. When they monetize, asking for contributions, they get millions a month, but they still need more investment. They employ 400+ people.

There's wise-cracking banter about woke entrepeneurship. A friend sets up a site called "Consensuality".

She wants to start a mentoring scheme for young women. She begins to be left out of discussions. She acquiesces rather easily. Cyrus meets somebody starting a site called "Obit me" which deals with social media when people die. Cyrus wants to integrate it with WAI - "amazing synergies". He then decides that WAI's software could recreate an AI version of a dead person by studying their phone and social media history - a dead person could continue texting etc. He wants to call it Afterlife. This is a step too far for Asha, who thinks that death-haunted Cyrus never got over the death of his mother. She sees potential for moral/legal disasters.

She resigns before she's sacked. She and Cyrus split. Then Covid strikes. Death-related use of the site soars. Then a user gets worked up about his late wife and kills himself despite Cyrus's attempt to talk him out of it. Interviewed, Cyrus says that he shouldn't have ignore his wife's advice. He resigns as CEO and suggests Asha as his replacement.

At the end of the audio book, the author and audio-book actor talk. Usually in such pieces, the actor interviews the author. Here it's the other way around. The actor said she didn't rehearse the final 2 chapters, wanting to be surprised. They discuss Asha, how she praises aspects of Cyrus that in the end destroy him, how she looks for female support which is passive rather than active. For me, Cyrus's charisma doesn't come over, nor does the excitement of the company's sudden growth.

Other reviews

• Hephzibah Anderson (The end result may not be entirely persuasive philosophically, but as high-octane entertainment that hits notes poignant as well as savagely witty, it soars.)
• Sam Baker
• Kirkus reviews (Anam's fourth novel is very good on all the tech and millennial accoutrements, with imaginary apps for everything from consensual sex to anal hygiene and no scene complete without a glass of raspberry shrub or rosemary water. Nits: The outcome is overly signaled; feminism plays an odd role somewhere between liberation ideology and buzzkill; the front end of the pandemic crashing into the back end of the book seems unnecessary.)
• goodreads