One Day in the Life of
Alexa, by Lisa Mason (Bast Books, 2017) incorporates lively prose,
past/present time jumps, and the consequences of longevity technology. Kosovo refugee
Alexa enrolls in a secret pilot program designed to extend her life span. Her best
friend, Marya, is not accepted, but Marya’s infant aka “Little Monster” is. As
the decades roll by, Alexa adapts to a life of constant measurement and
surveillance. And youth, for she ages only very slowly (and Little Monster takes
years to achieve what normal babies do in months) and in her mid-fifties still
appears as a very young adult. Every so often, disaster strikes, whether the
Moon fracturing into “lunettes” or a supervolcano eruption or a terrorist
bombing, but Alexa always manages to survive. Although the Testers are carefully
separated from one another, she manages to connect with one, the only man who
can understand what her life is like; after a period of pastel, childless marital
bliss, he falls over dead due to a “lethal gene.”
In reflection, the book is as
much about the enduring trauma of war as it is about longevity technology, and
in this it feels more like mainstream than science fiction. . Mason’s skill as a writer sustains what might be
better executed as a novella into a short novel. Still, it’s a quick, absorbing
read with an appealing narrator and subtly powerful emotional rhythms (like the
repeated refrain, “No matter how long I live, I will always remember this”).
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