I had high hopes for this slim little novella and while it didn’t entirely live up to them, I’m still thinking about it a few days later. Set in a very English dystopia, the nameless, genderless protagonist moves between various friends of artistic bent as they resist an ill-defined but ominous presence. In this version of England’s green and pleasant lands, travel is restricted, people are disappeared and curtains are always kept close.
The ongoing sense of unease is countered by the beauty and idyl of the surroundings, making it possible to belive how the majority of the population would go along with the rise of ‘they’. It’s never described exactly who they are or what they stand for and while communication and artistic expression aren’t explicitly outlawed, there are measures in place to hinder such activities. Their mission is to create an atmosphere of oppression that is almost invisible, but which can be felt in every fibre of one’s being.
The foreword by Carmen Maria Machado uses a term I hadn’t heard before: the fix-up novel. Made up of a collection of previously published stories which share a shared world and may be connected in the very loosest sense, but are connected.
(To be clear, Machado uses the phrase to say that ‘They’ is not a fix-up novel, but the idea is interesting to me. I will say, though, that ‘They’ worked better for me as it drew to the conclusion when it felt like it was pulling in a particular direction.)
The novel was out of print for many years and has been recently re-released by Faber Editions.