Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the French by Alice Banks – published October 2025

I have never used a virtual assistant. It’s not the technology that puts me off, in fact the reason I don’t use such help is difficult to pin down. Perhaps it’s just my generation. 

I’ve come across two good pieces of literary and visual art in the last few days that offer interesting perspectives on this type of AI. One is the film, <i>No Other Choice</i>, which I thought was a stand-out in a disappointing year for cinema. And the other was this book. 

There’s a dual timeline. 

In London in the 1990s an up and coming French composer is invited to arrange music for a stage production of Dorian Gray. Through his work he meets the love of his life, Liv, they live together, and have a daughter. 

And Paris in the present day.. the composer, Stan, now lives in France in a house left to him by his aunt. He now shares his life with Babette, a lifeguard and mother of a teenage boy about the same age as his daughter. Stan uses a virtual assistant, Laïvely, designed by Stan and given, rather spookily, Liv’s voice. Stan’s life begins to slowly disintegrate. 

If it were to be assigned a genre, which I like doing less and less these days as often it, in itself, can be a spoiler, it would a romance. But that’s quite widely inaccurate, and fulfils the sole role of saying this is a pleasantly unpredictable novel. It’s a slow reveal, but the telling of it is the impressive part. For Sénès, it’s her first literary novel, and she surely is someone to watch out for. 

My GoodReads score 4 / 5