Universality by Natasha Brown: book review
Overview: The novel opens with a lengthy magazine feature revolving around an assault that takes place at a countryside farm outside of London that's been taken over by a group of anarchist. The night of a rave, thrown by the anarchists, in the middle of COVID lockdown, ends with one man hitting another over the head with a gold bar and then disappearing into the night with the stolen riches turned weapon. The piece bounces around between the man who owned the farm, the anarchists that took it over, the culture wars columnist that links the anarchists and the owner of the farm, and additional unique characters. The second half of the book narratively follows some of these characters as well as the journalist who wrote the piece in snatches that further their portraits. Overall: 4
I'm not entirely sure what to make of this very short novel. My main impulse is that it doesn't quite feel like a novel as a reading experience. It doesn't feel like a story, primarily. It's more a social dissection, a portrait of a certain cultural time and place and these representative characters that stand in for facets of larger groups or sub-types. This is further driven home by the handful of scenes Brown chooses to play out. Media people at dinner, a large chunk at a literary festival. There isn't a true narrative through-line, and the characters don't feel developed beyond their utility to the wider points about the failings of our societies. The book does not deliver layered people with deep motivations and interiority. There's implicit judgements that come from the particular rendering of this set of situations, but much like Perfection by Vincent Latronico, I'm not entirely sure Brown feels the need to cast an authorial judgement. She has a trust the reader will walk away with her point from these snapshots. And she paints these accurately and in an interesting way, though it all feels much more mirror than window, which is necessary at times.
The book takes risks in its unconventionality. Thirty-five percent of the novel is the feature itself which we're launched into without context, and it offers the majority of the story as it bounces between various players in the dramatic incident. There are times where I felt this dragged, and I wondered what the point would be in the wider novel. It turns out that this feature is largely the novel. What disappointed me, somewhat, was that the central focus of the feature, the anarchist group that was turning cult-like and the interpersonal problems that led to the assault, were all put entirely to the wayside when the book shifted course. Which, it does make sense for the project. The book is really a critique of the media ecosystem as a whole more than anything. And, in that way, Brown makes her artificial device almost too compelling because I found myself wanting to go deeper on the content of the piece itself rather than look at the machinations around it. This perfectly makes the point Brown is going for, but I feel like it's worth saying on the plane of novels being entertainment and having the dimension of reader experience that there is something of a letdown in that choice.
The prose sections after the feature also felt technically weaker. She makes each section stylistically starkly different, which is helpful in getting into the characterization of these somewhat one-dimensional people faster, but some of the choices she makes to do this were somewhat off-putting. We first, disorientingly, go to Hannah who is the author of the piece but isn't really a player within it, so the transition doesn't move where the reader is expecting, and it takes longer than I would've liked to gather the context of this major shift. Hannah's section takes place at a dinner with her so-called friends. They all are competitive and look down on one another, and this is emphasized by the head-hopping that differentiates this chapter. I struggled with the execution of this and wondered how much we truly gained. It does give a small amount of insight into the journalist that eventually interviews Lenny at the book festival when we move into her segment, but I really questioned whether some of these technical choices worked or were executed as intended. The narrative sections include this dinner, a history of Richard, the banker who owned the farm that was taken over, which didn't feel entirely necessary, and the book festival Lenny attends. Richard's defense of himself and the self-pity rendered on the page for the reader to bring the judgement rather than the author, reminded me of the chapters from the chef's perspective in Service. The two scenes at a literary festival where the divisive columnist that instigated this feature as a means of publicity for her new book is speaking constitutes the ending. So it feels like threads are picked up then dropped without explanation or a sense of finality. There's a certain randomness that is somewhat offputting.
It's not that I didn't enjoy the book. I read it in a few quick bursts and was intrigued the whole time. But I also found myself consistently asking while reading, "Is this actually working?" The ending left me wondering about the summative feeling of this reading experience, and because the characters aren't a central facet, it was hard to have a deep emotional response. Perhaps if I wasn't as entrenched in the internet and the media world and the present moment, this use of portraiture would feel more revelatory? I think this is one of the few occasions where a book left me feeling mostly neutral.
More on Reading, Writing, and Me:
Getting my Dublin Library Card
Comments
Post a Comment