Parker's Reviews > The Bug: A Novel

This one was so engrossing I canceled plans and stayed up late just to finish it. It's a wonderful novel from Ellen Ullman about software development at a database maker during the early- and mid-80s PC revolution, but it's really about relationships between people, and between people and machines, and how we deal with flaws in those relationships. Most surprising to me, is that the software bug named in the title is fleshed out as a specific and realistic programming error, and is actually the source of a great deal of dramatic tension and sort of a character in itself. Very well done.