252 pages, Tyger Books
Review by Marc Nash
What's your favourite cause of dystopian
society? Nuclear apocalypse? Viral pandemic? Economic crash and burn? The
London of this book has contrived to put itself under a dystopian yoke through
democracy! Entrusted with power, the people have wilfully demonstrated either
apathy or irony in their choices. Consequently London has saddled itself with a
mad self-aggrandising bureaucracy of nonsensical jobs, such as Lucas as the
Inspector of Miracles. Though there is a vague unstated threat of worldwide
terrorism, more local threats of rapists and paedophiles at large, have led to
women being prohibited from work, having no political rights, being largely
confined to the house and having to wear burka-like garments when outside in
public.
Art, too, falls foul of this regime, since
art offers outlets for protest and politicisation. In a world without art there
is a diminished notion of love. The novel's husband and wife main characters
struggle across the kitchen table to communicate with one another, let alone
approach any notion of love. They cast their fantasies and desires outside of
their shared house. Angela, although she doesn't understand the concept, wants
to be a poet's muse. Her mind flies with some love letters she's been entrusted
with which like her, dream of escape beyond London. Lucas visits the wife of
his security chief who has been under surveillance, so that Lucas wants to put
flesh on the fantasy figure he has been a witness to on screen. With the house
under CCTV surveillance, he has to lure her outside, where of course she is
clad head to foot in her swaddling attire, so no flesh is visible. In his job
as the official investigator into claims of miracles, he becomes attached to a
mute girl who only communicates by smiling. His honed senses tells him she has
no miraculous powers, yet something about her and her mother who was formerly a
news reader means they are included in his plans to escape from London.
The characters' thought processes are
impressionistic and mainly inconclusive. After all, they are overwhelmed by
trying to match their own limited analytical abilities with the thoughts and
necessary conditions on their behaviour embedded by the system. Echoes of
Orwell's "1984" here. Put this together with the feminist perspective
suggested by the regressive legislation affecting women and you might conceive
this to be a political novel. But Smith is far more subtle than that. The Miracle Inspector
is more an investigation into the true nature and possibility of love.
Characters come to empathise with others around them, make sacrifices,
demonstrate an awareness of the 'other'. Verbal communication itself may remain
stunted, but a real emotional mutuality is attained. The ending for Lucas and
Angela is utterly heart-rending. The young poet who has the novel's final words
makes your mouth fall open with the simple but poignant observation he offers.
I described Smith's previous novel as
'slyly subversive'. This novel is all that and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment