Wedge shoes that display weight, BMI, calories burned and steps. A sleep helmet that monitors vital signs. Byron Gogol’s tech in Made for Love is beyond invasive — especially a chip implanted in your partner’s brain that creates a human mind-meld. This eccentric tech mogul is the man that Hazel married in Alissa Nutting’s intoxicating, darkly comedic thriller — the follow-up to her scandalous, national-headline stealing debut Tampa. Hazel escapes a compound — where there are cameras and scanners in every room — to desperately seek freedom from Gogol, whose “wealth and power were a terrifying glance of the infinite.” Bizarrely, she ends up living in a trailer park with her dad and his sex doll roommate. She realizes she can’t run from Gogol’s surveillance — and has to determine how to loosen herself from his clutches. The riveting ride was turned into a 2021 TV series for HBO starring Cristin Milioti, Billy Magnussen and Ray Romano. How do you escape someone who has gotten in your head? GQ, NPR and The New Yorker named Made for Love the book of 2017 when it was released by the former John Carroll University professor — to glowing praise. “As absurd and hilarious as it is poignant,” Cosmopolitan declared.
