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Tunnel of Toads
Toad is trying to live in Dublin.
An irate satire of the garrison under late capitalism.
An irate satire of the garrison under late capitalism.
- GenresFiction
214 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2023
33 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 27, 2024
Review remains backordered ("supply-chain issues"), but this discomfiting, disorienting, sign-o-the-timez book haunts me still...
Who is Toad?
(she is I, You, maybe Sophie too, the POV, like Delillo's financial sector in Cosmopolis, is whatever the times require of her, but inscrutably so)
Whither tunnels she?
(towards or through an Ireland, INC—and LLC and, of course, PLC and TM, as well as ☣— and which is always-already in process, processing us?)
(through a Welfare and Benefits/Rent Assistance app which assesses her via the ultimate in ground-rent: her attention, and her time )
(through time, which is always-already, but more&more, pro tem, temping-time)
(through privatized corporate spaces, preterite meat & meet spaces, either in abject support of our Overlords' latest projects, in opposition to them, and/or both)
(through endless futility)
So many memorable moments of razor-wire-sharp and hovering-drone-omnifocal and -lucent prose deserve more than this. I hope to circle back through the tunnel to retrieve them.
Who is Toad?
(she is I, You, maybe Sophie too, the POV, like Delillo's financial sector in Cosmopolis, is whatever the times require of her, but inscrutably so)
Whither tunnels she?
(towards or through an Ireland, INC—and LLC and, of course, PLC and TM, as well as ☣— and which is always-already in process, processing us?)
(through a Welfare and Benefits/Rent Assistance app which assesses her via the ultimate in ground-rent: her attention, and her time )
(through time, which is always-already, but more&more, pro tem, temping-time)
(through privatized corporate spaces, preterite meat & meet spaces, either in abject support of our Overlords' latest projects, in opposition to them, and/or both)
(through endless futility)
So many memorable moments of razor-wire-sharp and hovering-drone-omnifocal and -lucent prose deserve more than this. I hope to circle back through the tunnel to retrieve them.
January 27, 2024
Had the pleasure of meeting Chris Beausang at a charity do once. He was surprisingly down to earth, and VERY funny.
February 5, 2024
"And then they realized, they were no longer little toads: they were little tunnels." :'(
February 20, 2024
In its most surreal and alienating moments this is A Scanner Darkly for Dublin’s gig-working young. Pessimistic (=a good thing) and very funny. Lots of minute and careful description of the increasingly touristy and hostile built world, but there’s also sudden and lurching shifts in perspective. Loved the speech by an English academic I’ll call “Larry Falconville” — very really helpful stuff from him. At times I tried to frame it unsuccessfully as a spiritual contest between the forces of cheap, ample cans, delivered by scooter, and the forces of insanely overpriced cocktails at bars yielding to tourism…
February 18, 2024
Enjoyable read about a young person in Dublin who has failed in life. Shiftless and burdened with a useless degree, Toad continues to live the life of a student while hoping for government handouts.
The writing was good; reminded me a lot of my own time being young and broke in Dublin.
The writing was good; reminded me a lot of my own time being young and broke in Dublin.
February 21, 2024
Class. Made me both nostalgic for my twenties and miserable about the future. In a good way!
December 24, 2024
Bizzare time bending. Read almost as four extracts/ tunnels from one life bound by the personal and social impacts of hyper capitalism.
October 27, 2024
Both murky and vivid, like real memories. I hope Chris keeps writing.
March 15, 2024
A fascinating, experimental and mysterious short novel. I don’t pretend to have understood all of it, but it engaged me and is full of memorable images.
The narrative switches person several times, but the voice is always Toad (or maybe sometimes her double, Sophie), a sort of unguided pilgrim wandering through a Dublin that sometimes feels very present, other times signifies a not-too-distant future.
The dystopian elements are depressingly plausible, from the technology used by police to hamstring protesters, to demeaning apps for seeking house rentals, to the omnipresent creeping catastrophe of climate change. Not to mention the the acutely on-point satire of hustle-tech-speak coming from a friend of Aodh, Toad’s sometimes boyfriend and co-conspirator in housing activism (Beausang also satirises this kind of phoney speech in a short story called ‘Three glimpses of someone much better than you are at doing the thing that you hate doing the least” published in the Spring 2022 edition of the Belfield Literary Review. In this case the context is a conference, but the satire is similar, and very funny).
The setting is almost always Dublin - not usually the centre (until the very end) but the peripheries, the only places the characters can afford to live, cut off from the increasingly deserted city by lack of public transport. A section set on a cruise ship certainly highlights the demeaning nature of service work on these vessels, but it’s not very clear how that relates to the other parts of the book. With that said, this is a novel of episodes rather than a fixed narrative, and with the frequent changes in voice, often mid-chapter, it makes sense that the place or even the time shifts as frequently. It seems fitting that the only reference to the natural world I remember is presence of gulls in Dublin - as the city empties out and becomes increasingly, inexorably unliveable, the gulls remain, the true inheritors of the metropolis.
The narrative switches person several times, but the voice is always Toad (or maybe sometimes her double, Sophie), a sort of unguided pilgrim wandering through a Dublin that sometimes feels very present, other times signifies a not-too-distant future.
The dystopian elements are depressingly plausible, from the technology used by police to hamstring protesters, to demeaning apps for seeking house rentals, to the omnipresent creeping catastrophe of climate change. Not to mention the the acutely on-point satire of hustle-tech-speak coming from a friend of Aodh, Toad’s sometimes boyfriend and co-conspirator in housing activism (Beausang also satirises this kind of phoney speech in a short story called ‘Three glimpses of someone much better than you are at doing the thing that you hate doing the least” published in the Spring 2022 edition of the Belfield Literary Review. In this case the context is a conference, but the satire is similar, and very funny).
The setting is almost always Dublin - not usually the centre (until the very end) but the peripheries, the only places the characters can afford to live, cut off from the increasingly deserted city by lack of public transport. A section set on a cruise ship certainly highlights the demeaning nature of service work on these vessels, but it’s not very clear how that relates to the other parts of the book. With that said, this is a novel of episodes rather than a fixed narrative, and with the frequent changes in voice, often mid-chapter, it makes sense that the place or even the time shifts as frequently. It seems fitting that the only reference to the natural world I remember is presence of gulls in Dublin - as the city empties out and becomes increasingly, inexorably unliveable, the gulls remain, the true inheritors of the metropolis.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews