Moderation: A Novel

by Elaine Castillo

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

When the lines between virtual reality and human interaction start to blur, surrendering to the messiness of life might just be the only option. This is a humorously disarming love story that comes wrapped up in big tech and family drama.

“A love story for those who love Severance (both Ling Ma’s book and the unaffiliated Apple TV+ series). . . ambitious, challenging, and brilliant.” —Elle

“Castillo’s flinty satire of the tech industry [transforms] into a sultry romance novel.” —The Atlantic

A bold and inventive novel about real romance in the virtual workplace—​bringing Castillo's trademark wit and sharp cultural criticism to an irresistible story about the possible future of love.

Girlie Delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global pandemic, she’s going places: she’s getting a promotion. Now thanks to her parent company Paragon’s purchase of Fairground—the world’s preeminent virtual reality content provider—she’s on the way to becoming an elite VR moderator, playing in the big leagues and, if her enthusiastic bosses are to be believed, moderating the next stage of human interaction. 

Despite the isolation that virtual reality requires from colleagues, friends, and family, the unbelievable perks of her new job mean she can solve a lot of her family's problems with money and mobility. She doesn't have to think about the childhood home they lost back in the Bay Area, or history at all—she can just pay any debts that come due. But when she meets William Cheung, Playground’s wry, reticent co-founder (now Chief Product Officer) and slowly unearths some of his secrets, and finds herself somehow falling in love, she’ll learn that history might be impossible to moderate and the future utterly impossible to control.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593489673
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Elaine Castillo, named one of “30 of the Planet’s Most Exciting Young People” by the Financial Times, was born and raised in the Bay Area. Her debut novel, America Is Not the Heart, was a finalist for numerous prizes including the Elle Big Book Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize and was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, Real Simple, Lit Hub, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Post, Kirkus Reviews, and the New York Public Library.

Editorial Reviews

Biting . . . Castillo explores the wonders and limitations of technology while skewering its stewards’ appetite for power.”
—The New Yorker

“Moderation is, at its core, a book about the moment when everything we’ve been repressing comes back to the surface. You can hide from yourself for only so long: until the work day ends, until your favorite show is over, until the feed runs out of content, until the digital tide recedes and all that is left is your broken, beautiful life.”
—The Atlantic

“Castillo’s close third-person narration, and her unerring ear for social performance, make for a novel that is often baroquely funny, full of barbed observations that detonate like precision-guided bombs.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Written in hurtling prose that fires off provocative insights on almost every page, Moderation marks an impressive step forward for this gifted writer.”
—The Washington Post

“Girlie’s story is a wry and witty commentary on how the real has been swamped by the virtual, and how moderation of any kind is just an illusion.”
—The Financial Times

“Moderation is a highly human story about finding love in a virtual place.”
—Vulture

“Fantastically, and terrifyingly, human.”
—The Observer

“A story made fresh by a vivid and dexterous narrative voice, a voice that is by turns sardonically attentive to the specificities of each world and alive to the interfaces between them. A voice that lays worlds open for us to read.”
—Locus

“A love story for those who love Severance (both Ling Ma’s book and the unaffiliated Apple TV+ series), Moderation is ambitious, challenging, and brilliant.”
—Elle

“This setup gives Castillo a long satirical runway, even some room for light sci-fi—all to the good. But Moderation is really a romantic comedy of the I-fell-for-my-boss variety…I applaud its trappings, which are daringly loveless, even churlish.”
—Harper's

“The scenes set in the too-real but also pointedly not-quite-real virtual world that Girlie has to moderate are reliably mesmerizing, and this seduction, Moderation seems to say, may obfuscate the real violence in the not-so-real realms. And if the current historical moment, per cultural theorist Neferti Tadiar, is defined by the struggle to become human in a time of permanent war, reprieve may come from, among others, fully (re-)inhabiting our human bodies (Girlie weightlifts), the possibility — and terror — of desire and love, and the keen recognition of our common humanity, our primal cries for help and banal feelings about community, behind the shifting avatars.”
—Rolling Stones Phillippines

“Castillo writes about love like someone who has experienced it with every sense in their body . . . Like a great romance writer, Castillo draws readers to the bend of William’s elbow, the heat that radiates off of him, the thrill of running into him unexpectedly. In writing about love—and about simulated reality—Castillo leans in to immersion, the sense that all senses are tuned and reactive.”
—Alta Journal

“As our world becomes more virtual, so too does romance. That shift grounds Castillo’s intriguing latest, where one of the world’s best content moderators must contend with falling in love during a digital—and increasingly isolated—era.”
—The Millions

“Tender and cutting, engrossing and immediate—Elaine Castillo's Moderation is a moving meditation on connection, growth, and how, in a world that's constantly on the verge of ending, one way we move forward is cultivating our own. Castillo's prose is luminous and lucid, balancing humor and emotion with wicked aplomb. Castillo expertly stretches the possibilities of language; Moderation is infinite.”
—Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal

“With its unyielding density of sharply observed detail, high-resolution psychological drama, and driving narrative momentum, Moderation reminded me that the novel is still the best form of virtual reality we have.”
—Jenny Odell, New York Times bestselling author of Saving Time and How to Do Nothing

“Moderation is a novel that refuses to do things by halves. It is a piercing, laser-precise exploration of big tech and its imperialist intentions; it is a breathtakingly funny and complex portrait of immigrant communities in America; it is a highly charged, passionate and tender love story, willing to embrace myriad forms of love. A wonderful book.”
—Kaliane Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of The Ministry of Time

“Phenomenal. A blisteringly funny critique of big tech, and an amazing love story too.”
—Susan Barker, author of Old Soul

“Moderation is a sharp, absorbing, potent work by one of modern fiction’s smartest voices.”
—BookPage (starred review)

“With this novel, her second after America Is Not the Heart (2018), Castillo raises the bar for writing about tech and virtual reality, family stories, and workplace romances. Castillo’s gorgeous prose infuses both the real world and the virtual reality landscapes with life. A brilliant novel with much to say about work, family, excess, identity, and love.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Castillo shifts seamlessly in scale and tone, from a wide-angled systems novel to a love story, and from barbed satire to staggering emotional depth. It’s a triumph.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Sharp . . . compelling [and] slyly brilliant. While cleverly interrogating interactions, communication, and relationships, Castillo again proves to be an enviably erudite chronicler of (racist) history, power structures, identity politics, and socioeconomic inequities.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“A winning combination of cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned romance, this is perfect for fans of The Ministry of Time and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.”
—Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

★ 2025-05-30
A jaded content moderator gets more than she bargained for, on the job and off.

Having been a content moderator at social media site Reeden for an unheard-of 10 years, 30-something Filipina Girlie Delmundo excels at her job. Girlie works in the company’s Vegas location, where her family relocated after her mother and aunts snapped up pricey real estate and then lost everything in the 2008 stock market crash, forcing Girlie’s mother to sell their family home in Milpitas and saddling her with a million dollars in debt. Sardonic, prickly, “battle-hardened bisexual” Girlie uses the money she earns to buy her materialistic mother designer goods and pay down the family debt. In conjunction with L’Olifant, a French company known for its historical theme parks, Reeden acquires virtual reality company Playground, and Girlie meets William Cheung, one of Playground’s first employees and current Global Head of Content Moderation. William offers Girlie a promotion (and a massive raise) to join the Playground team moderating content in real time in the company’s virtual reality landscapes. Playground’s goal is not strictly realism but “larger than life. Realer reality. Sensory overload,” as Girlie observes. As Playground grows, regulatory troubles and scandals—there’s a lingering mystery surrounding the death of Edison Lau, Playground’s founder and William’s friend—swirl around the company. These developments, along with the horrifying realization of the mutual attraction growing between her and the aloof William, threaten the meticulous construction that Girlie has made of her career and her life. With this novel, her second afterAmerica Is Not the Heart (2018), Castillo raises the bar for writing about tech and virtual reality, family stories, and workplace romances. Castillo’s gorgeous prose infuses both the real world and the virtual reality landscapes with life. Girlie is an exceptional protagonist, defined by her cutting humor and dogged, almost maniacal independence and rounded out by her fondness for her exuberant, naïve cousin Maribel, the rawness of her feelings for William, and her yearning for true happiness, if she can find a way to let it in.

A brilliant novel with much to say about work, family, excess, identity, and love.

Kirkus Reviews