The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances - Glenn Dixon - ★★★

AUTHOR: Glenn Dixon

GENRE: Dystopian Science Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: April 7, 2026

RATING: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: A near-future technological fiction. A fair mix of human and appliance characters. Liked the humans, loved the appliances. Creative plot but confused execution. Didn't expect it to be so dystopian and sombre in tone. Too many themes. A few unclarified plot loopholes. Could have been fabulous with a better, streamlined structure. Recommended but not a must-read.

Plot Preview: (This preview goes beyond the initial 10-15% as the story is somewhat slow to get going.)

In the near-future, retired senior citizens Harold and Edie live in a smart house where the appliances are sentient enough to handle everything for them with the help of the omnipresent and omniscient Grid. Their little Roomba vacuum, who wants to be called Scout after enjoying one of the classics Harold read to the terminally ill Edie on her bed, longs for a greater human connection with her owners but the other senior appliances dissuade her from breaking the rules. After Edie passes away, the appliances discover a horrifying truth about their future. With Harold desolate in his grief and his formerly estranged daughter Kate restricted by her position, it is up to Scout and the rest of the sentient gang to counter the overly powerful Grid.

The story comes to us in the third-person perspective of various characters.

This is a book I picked up just on seeing the quirky cover and the poetic title. As such, the contents took me by surprise. I didn’t expect this to be a dystopian read echoing certain aspects of Big Brother from Orwell’s ‘1984’. It is not a bad book, but it helps to know beforehand that it is not an easy read and that it has darker dystopian aspects.

Bookish Yays:

⏰ The creativity of the storyline. This isn't the first time I have read a story with a sentient Roomba (TJ Klune’s “In the Lives of Puppets” has a much better one!) but I liked the originality of getting the smart and not-so-smart appliances together to work against the potent Grid.

⏰ The various ‘appliances’ in the story, especially Scout the little Roomba with a big heart and a fondness for classical piano music. I liked how they had distinct personalities. The sentience works very well for the plot.

⏰ The fact that the ending is just right – not too neat, not too morose, not too joyous.

⏰ The quirky cover and the lyrical title – loved both!

Bookish Okays:

🚗 The humans. There are only four main human characters, all important to the story in varying degrees and each with different personalities and skill sets. However, their character detailing is somewhat vague. We know only what the story needs us to know instead of getting a clear idea of what makes them the way they are.

🚗 The Grid. A solid concept at par with Big Brother. But again, we know them only to the extent required for the ongoing events of the plot. A more detailed context would have elevated the story.

🚗 The AI angle. A good chunk of the plot reminds us of the ever-increasing infiltration of AI in our lives. This can go either way. I am not a fan of generative AI and “smart appliances” that constantly eavesdrop on our talks even when we aren’t online. But it is good to see that the appliances are mostly on the right side of the battle in this book.

🚗 The pacing – very slow. But as the book is short (a little more than 200 pages), it somewhat balances the time required for reading.

🚗 The drastic change in tone. The start of the story is highly whimsical and cozy, but after a certain event, the plot turns strongly dystopian. The impact of this would depend on what you picked up the book for. I picked it up for the cozy vibes, so the gloominess of the rest didn’t match my reading mood. The transition between the two moods also felt abrupt.

🚗 The change in character perspectives. In the initial pages, the narrative is from the point of view of the appliances, chiefly Scout. I loved these chapters. However, after Kate’s arrival, a major chunk of the story is presented from the various humans’ POVs. This was very disappointing to me. I would have enjoyed the book far better had the entire story come from the appliances’ perspective. Also, there is a lot of headjumping in the book, and not always at the end of marked sections. This gets distracting at times.

Bookish Nays:

🔌 Kate’s sketchy backstory. Leaves several facts and emotions unclarified. I didn’t understand her behaviour and motivations at all because of her poor character detailing. Even for the rest of the plot, a few points stay unanswered even till the end.

🔌 The piano exam scene. No official piano exam in the world is conducted like that, especially not at the higher music grades. A little fictionalisation is fine, but this was too farfetched to be convincing.

🔌 Way too many themes. The second half is especially cluttered. The plot should have decided on a couple of main themes and stuck to them. So many issues raised in a single book means that the impact of each is terribly diluted.

Overall, I like the idea of combining sentient appliances with a dystopian theme and making the sentience human-friendly. However, it felt like the plot has a split personality. How can a story be cozy and darkly dystopian simultaneously? The overload of themes and the underdevelopment of the human characters didn’t help. I still liked the story enough, but with a few more tweaks to the content, this could easily have been a top favourite of the year.

The author’s note states that this book takes inspiration from ‘The Brave Little Toaster’. But as I haven’t read/watched this, I have no idea about the extent of the similarity.

Recommended to those who enjoy slow-paced dystopian stories with Big-Brother vibes.

My thanks to Atria Books for providing the DRC of “The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.