TURBINE | KAPOHAU

I read NLMG last night – just slurped it up in one sitting. I liked the slow swirling horror but kind of endured the endlessly intricate unpacking of the clones’s complex personal lives. The heart of the book is the incredible scene at the end with the retired Guardians, but it builds on the delicately dropped hints about the clones’s status – how they’re tucked away into run down derelict properties. I saw a slightly huffy article from Rachel Cusk explaining that it wasn’t science fiction, which partly comes from that deep-rooted disdain for genre – rayguns and robots; kids’ stuff – but it’s also accurate, in that NLMG is only so-so as science fiction, because it’s not terribly interested in working out the implications of raising humans as medical cattle. That said, I love that it never has anyone really question the premise in any meaningful way. The clones go to their death, basically happily, and none of the shattering societal implications are explored.

The part of the book that it spins around is the meeting with the Guardians, so it’s worth looking at the way the words shift from a flat, almost autistic recounting of events and relationships to something curlier and stranger, like the corner of the clones’s reality is being lifted up and something dark and gothic is being revealed, ironically in the context of being given a straightforward answer for the first time in their lives. Hallways recede into shadows, corridors narrow and there are strange old scents and people in rocking chairs dispensing hard truth.

As we went in, I noticed the front door had coloured glass panels, and once Tommy closed it behind us, everything got pretty dark. We were in a hallway so narrow you felt you’d be able to touch the walls on either side just by stretching out your elbows. Madame had stopped in front of us, and was standing still, her back to us, again like she was listening.  Peering past her I saw that the hallway, narrow as it was, divided further: to the left was a staircase going upstairs; to the right, an even narrower passage leading deeper into the house.  

Following Madame’s example I listened too, but there was only silence in the house.  Then, maybe from somewhere upstairs, there was a faint thump. That small noise seemed to signify something to her, because she now turned to us and pointing into the darkness of the passage, said: 

‘Go in there and wait for me. I’ll be down shortly.’

She began to climb the stairs, then seeing our hesitation, leaned over the banister and pointed again into the dark.  

‘In there,’ she said, then vanished upstairs.

That’s Gothic as hell, and does such a job of preparing you for the dark wisdom about to be delivered. It’s not for the characters – they’re really unchanged by the revelation. It’s the readers that this is aimed at.

What a delicious book, full of delicious sentences. It’s hard writing good animals if you’re not doing a kids’ book and this one walks a vanishingly fine line doing it – recognisably alien, because it has to be, yet recognisably human, because let’s not fuck around with tall shouter put the white food squares in the steel make-hot-box – let’s just have the character use the toaster.  

Tama gets human language and we accept it because of how assured the storytelling is. He’s a charming narrator. I particularly love how gothic and metal the magpies are when they talk to each other (DEATH BY CAR, DRINK THEIR BLOOD) when really we’re just talking about a medium-to-small bird, innit? But the novel isn’t using them as figures of fun either.

Also Chidgey just does some damn good sentences. They sort of roll around in delight at their playfulness but it’s not exclusive. It wants to share the fun with the reader.