Musick Hund On Cronenberg Novel

MUSIK HUND (who's currently about two-thirds through the book) says:

All the stuff you would expect to find in a novel written by the director of "Videodrome" and "ExistenZ" is in "Consumed": it is a meditation on the interface of technology and the body, disease, human psychology, and the history of philosophy. It is interesting to take note of the fact that the last movie Cronenberg wrote himself, "ExistenZ," (1999) was released several years before computer technology went truly mobile, hence "Consumed" is, ahem, consumed with Apple products as extensions of--tools of expression of--the body, sexuality, disease, etc. For example, a creepy scene gets set up in the novel, but instead of being "shown" the scene directly, Cronenberg has two characters  scrolling through photos of it on a MacBook and allows the narrative to be carried forward by their conversation about what they are seeing on the screen. Other devices--iPhones, iPads, esoteric cameras and audio recorders--serve similar narrative functions.

On the other hand, as a fan of Cronenberg's films, what's so interesting about this novel is the presence of a narrative voice that can tell the reader stuff, stuff that the camera could show us only obliquely. Much of this telling has to do with how the characters express their inner lives through their technological preferences. Or it may be that their inner lives have been replaced by technological preferences as the two protagonists are consumed by sex and gadgets in a novel about a mysterious act of cannibalism.