Kismet

Tredget’s trenchant, entertaining debut traces how big data and social media have become an obstacle for healthy relationships. Anna, a Londoner on the cusp of turning 30, nets her first major writing project for her job at a quasi-journalistic publication that blends sponsoring companies’ brand values with reporting. Feeling left behind by her friends’ trappings of adulthood and vaguely dissatisfied with her long-term partner, Pete, Anna signs up for Kismet, a dating service that harvests users’ online activity to rate matches. Immediately following a badly bungled interview, Anna meets exceptionally handsome 40-something Geoff. Though Anna and the stable, predictable Pete rate a 70 compatibility score, the more adversarial, spontaneous Geoff hits an improbably high 81. He reminds Anna of her deceased father, a chance for Tredget to perhaps too easily overinvest many of Anna’s inadequacies, missteps, and hidden desires in her bereavement. Geoff encourages her to return to her bygone creative projects, including using Instagram to solicit help in reuniting an abandoned suitcase to its owner. As Anna hesitantly embarks on an affair with Geoff, Tredget carefully maps how their compatibility score fosters a psychological disintegration that alienates everyone else in her life. Tredget’s solid satire provides an incisive view of the uncertainties of contemporary adulthood. Agent: Georgia Garrett, Rogers, Coleridge and White. (Aug.)