Our lives have become inundated with technology at a pace that seems to have eclipsed any examination of what is useful, and what we lose by relying on it. Do our refrigerators need to show us ads, or do our coffee machines need to upload data to the cloud? It's also becoming increasingly difficult to browse the internet without wondering whether what we're seeing is real. These questions lie at the foundation of Frank Huyler's impressive new novel, The Red Dress (Bellevue Literary Press; 240 pages). Rather than taking us directly into the heart of a tech company or dropping us into the detached reality of Silicon Valley, The Red Dress opts for a subtle, yet no less effective, approach. It tells the story of Nick, a commercial yacht captain in France living a wayward life, when Claude, a former colleague and caterer, offers to hire him for a mysterious, short-term yet high-paying job as a yacht captain on a private island.

Within the opening pages, the strength of Huyler's delicate, ethereal prose bursts from the page. It's spare, but not minimalist; it packs ample detail into as few words as possible while still painting vivid pictures. There's a feeling of remove, as though Nick is narrating the story from the distant reaches of his memory, and Huyler's able to build tension without overt immediacy. It's not the kind of prose that basks in figurative language or wastes empty words in dialogue. It's quiet and reflective, but it can still pack a punch when needed.

We soon learn that the glasses' primary purpose isn't to provide digital information or make the staff as available as possible; it's to obscure the faces of the mysterious tech oligarch serving as the island's host and those of his guests. While the host may deem the technology important for security, we're shown how dehumanizing the entire experience can be. The staff doesn't deserve to see their employers' faces, as though they operate as part of a lower life form. Indeed, it seems the boss doesn't treat regular people as people. The island he purchased wasn't uninhabited, and building his paradise required displacing thousands of locals and bulldozing many of their homes. Everyone not living at the top of the social ladder is deemed unworthy of life, yet they must also provide for their master's comfort, and though they may have reservations, they have no choice but to take the jobs. As Claude explains late in the novel: "We have to want a better life or else there is no point to life. But still. These people . . . we are like those little crabs to them. We are running around trying to find a new shell and they are picking us up for fun"

Tied to the dehumanizing aspect of the technology is a larger examination of what we lose when we create something fake. We can no longer tell what's real and what's not, a struggle the novel keeps returning to. The required glasses can manufacture images that don't exist, connecting the wearer to people who aren't there. In one particularly noteworthy example, Natalie is told that the jungle encompassing most of the island has wild monkeys. During a walk with Nick, she begs to see them. When they put on their glasses, monkeys appear in the trees, simulating the experience of seeing them. But what's a simulation? How well can it replace what's real? We know it's not the same thing, despite the tech industry's best efforts to make us believe it's close enough. Natalie sums it up best, when Nick asks her if she thinks the digital monkeys look real: "No . . . They look like my coloring book."  

While the novel frequently hits on the dangers of modern society, Nick and Natalie's relationship grounds it in humanity. Soon after her arrival, Natalie is invited to play dates with the boss's two daughters and eventually spends the night at the private house, but the next day returns home without an important red dress Claude had given her, thanks to a meltdown by one of the boss's children. At that point, Nick nearly snaps, endangering his position on the island and Claude's, as he tries to protect his daughter from their surroundings and shield her from the worst parts of modern humanity.

A natural divide exists between father and daughter, given the limited chance Nick has to spend with Natalie. He's often left in awe of her precociousness, and his desire to connect with her and give her memorable experiences led them to this island in the first place. Nick possesses such a strong inclination to defend his daughter that he lashes out, right or wrong, about the red dress being destroyed. How much the dress actually matters to Natalie is debatable, but it represents Nick's insecurity about his ability to keep his daughter safe. The most touching moments come when Nick is hit with reminders of how multi-dimensional his daughter has become: "Natalie was a quiet girl most of the time. She was also, I was coming to learn, a steady girl. She was a girl who shed few tears, whose thoughts were difficult to read." As the story moves briskly toward its conclusion, Nick makes choices that endanger his and Natalie's position on the island, as well as his own future. But their relationship is so strongly built throughout the text that we understand why he makes each decision to defend his daughter's feelings.

Occasionally, the narrative breaks into departures that give the reader a chance to breathe. They take the form of sea stories in a book provided in Nick's guest cottage. The stories aren't pointless; instead, they offer metaphors that feel heavy-handed, but that doesn't diminish their effectiveness. One sea story in particular describes a Dutch clerk who plans to harvest ice from Greenland for huge profits, but he doesn't predict the sun's effect on ice. So much preparation, yet it's still possible to be unprepared. This reinforces the novel's main themes. One could argue that including these departures takes away from the narrative moment. Still, with such a tightly constructed plot and careful pacing, these departures give the reader a chance to slow down and process the narrative as a whole.

The Red Dress is a tightly wound, beautifully written novel that packs a lot into limited space, and its greatest strength is how it turns technology's dangers into a clear, urgent concern. The characters feel real and elicit sympathy when needed. Books like this may convey technology's dangers more effectively than ones that place us immediately within a tech company, because Huyler keeps the critique focused and humane. In that sense, it is a necessary read for anyone who shares concerns about tech overreach but appreciates sparse, beautiful prose. Fans of literary fiction with introspective character studies, readers interested in ethical questions around technology, and those drawn to atmospheric, thought-provoking narratives will find a ton to like in this novel. It's a fascinating examination of how human relationships intersect with technological change.