What wonders there are in Nicola Barker’s bewildering, fatiguing and deliciously stimulating new novel, and what colours would those adjectives appear in had they been processed by The Graph, the all-seeing, nearly all-controlling system that monitors citizens’ emotions and accordingly represents them in pinks, reds, blues and purples? The more dramatic the emotion, the stronger the colour – but rather than indicating a welcome concentration of excitement or pleasure, such variations are to be repudiated: in Barker’s brave new world – whether a dystopia or a utopia is a moot point – stability, calm and neutrality are prized above all else.
This is the post-history, post-pain, post-individual world of The Young, who have traded what the uninitiated might view as their liberty for membership of a moderated, soothed and protected group consciousness. Sexual desire, grief, regret, hope, ambition – all are things of the past, or would be, should The Past still be permitted to exist. As “characters” on the page, even their physicality is dubious; despite mentions of hand, chairs, clothes, light, they read as if strangely and disturbingly disembodied.
In the face of such colliding stories, characters and frames of reference, culture becomes a kaleidoscope, constantly shifting
Related: Nicola Barker: ‘I find books about middle-class people so boring – I feel like stabbing myself’
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