Second Life
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Second Life
Narrated by:
Amanda Hess
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Narrated by:
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Amanda Hess
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By:
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Amanda Hess
About this listen
'Acutely empathetic, thoroughly researched, funny, irreverent and moving' Observer
'What a book! Has the lyricism and intelligence of a literary masterpiece, and the urgency of a thriller' Marianne Levy, author of Don't Forget to Scream
'So interesting, astute and beautifully crafted. I loved it' Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence
In the summer of 2020, when Amanda Hess was pregnant for the first time, a routine ultrasound screening detected a mysterious abnormality in her baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers online. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search unleashed a destabilizing onslaught of data and technology, and she was vulnerable - more than ever - to conspiracy, myth, judgement, commerce and obsession.
In Second Life, Hess tells her deeply personal story of a pregnancy that falls outside the fêted category of 'normal'. But this is also a story about all of us. For as she made her way through a bizarre digital world of pregnancy apps, prenatal genetic tests, gender reveal videos, rare disease Facebook groups, 'freebirth' influencers and hospital reality shows, Hess realised that ideas of eugenics, surveillance, ableism and hyper-individualism are being sold through shiny technologies to a new generation of parents.
At once funny, surreal and heartbreaking, Second Life asks compelling questions about how our most fundamental human experiences are fractured and reshaped by technology.©2025 Amanda Hess (P)2025 Hachette Audio UK
Editorial Review
She walked so we could run ... away
You could say I’ve been a tad obsessed with parenting memoirs since becoming a parent myself, and few have spoken truer to me than Amanda Hess’s, in which she documents her pregnancy to parenthood journey in a chronically connected world. This isn’t a how-to guide disguised as memoir, to be clear. I’d call it more of a commiseration guide for anyone who religiously tracked their cycle in an app, spent restless nights googling whether their sleeping newborn’s grunts were normal, or found themselves in a niche parenting rabbit hole out of sheer morbid curiosity. No, it’s not just you, she seems to reassure with each chapter. It’s the system. Hess narrates, and her delivery is warm and intimate while also capturing the subtle humour and absurdity of this whole experience of parenting (and performing parenting) online. You may still feel tempted to move to an off-the-grid cabin in the woods after listening, but at least you’ll know you’re not alone.—Sam D., Audible Editor
What listeners say about Second Life
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