The Smoke

by Simon Ings

Simon Ings' The Smoke is about love, loss and loneliness in an incomprehensible world.

Humanity has been split into three different species. Mutual incomprehension has fractured the globe. As humans race to be the first of their kind to reach the stars, another Great War looms.

For you that means returning to Yorkshire and the town of your birth, where factories churn out the parts for gigantic spaceships. You're done with the pretentions of the capital and its unfathomable architecture. You're done with the people of the Bund, their easy superiority and unstoppable spread throughout the city of London and beyond. You're done with Georgy Chernoy and his questionable defeat of death. You're done with his daughter, Fel, and losing all the time. You're done with love.

But soon enough you will find yourself in the Smoke again, drawn back to the life you thought you'd left behind.

You're done with love. But love's not done with you.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Fantasy, Alternate History, British Literature, Speculative Fiction

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 17, 2018

About the author

I began by writing science fiction stories, novels and films, before disappearing down various rabbit-holes: perception (The Eye: A Natural History), 20th-century radical politics (The Weight of Numbers), the shipping system (Dead Water) and augmented reality (Wolves). I co-founded and edited Arc magazine, a digital publication about the future, before joining New Scientist magazine as its arts editor. Now I eke out a freelance living in possibly the coldest flat in London, writing arts reviews for the newspapers. My latest non-fiction is Stalin and the Scientists, a history of Soviet science. My latest novel is The Smoke.

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is literary science fiction. It’s an alt-history set in a 1950s Britain with biotech and atomic rockets. Tangled family relations played a large part of the story. A tech-inspired species split has occurred to host the story’s British class-theme, although I thought the novel to be more Darwinist than class-related. This book was well written and complex. It wasn’t an easy read, and won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

This book was a slim 300-pages, although it felt longer than that.

I used to read books by this author a long time ago. Hot-head was an excellent cyberpunk novel in its day. Then he stopped writing. This is one of the first books he’s written in about 10-years. It’s very different from earlier books.

The prose was excellent. There were several wonderful ‘turns of phrase’. I thought descriptive prose to be better than dialog, through use of a rich vocabulary drawing from the end of the last century. This carried over into the protagonist’s inner dialog, but most of the dialog was in regional or class-based vernacular. There were several different POVs, which I found disconcerting. There was more than one first-person in addition to second-person narration. Flashbacks make-up a large part of the story. They are handled well.

There was a small set of characters. The nominal protagonist was Stuart (can’t recall last name, even if given). He was a young, Yorkshireman architect disenfranchised by biological and technological change in the new "struggle for existence”. His love interest is Fel Chernoy. She was a member of the new homo superior species. Her father Georgy Chernoy was a wealthy, influential luminary. Oddly Georgy elected to remain an old-style human. Georgy's paramour was Stuart’s aunt, a famous stage and screen actress. A further POV came from an unnamed ‘Chickie’. Minor characters included Stuart’s father, mother and brother. In general, the level of character development was good and they had an interesting entanglement.

There was minimal sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll in the story. Folks had sex. It was spoken of, but never descriptively. Substance abuse was in-line with the alt-1950’s. Alcohol was consumed, occasionally to the point of drunkenness. Tobacco was likewise consumed. Drugs are present and easily available. Folks self-medicate with "Greenies", to take "the edge off". I would consider indulging in the pheromonal excretions of the Chickies to be a drug of sorts too. The only music mentioned is Fel's facility with the piano. There was a small amount of violence, mostly physical. The violence is tastefully done. The author's talent for description makes the wounds worse than the act. Body count is low. This cannot be considered a YA read, despite the youth of the protagonist.

World building was exceptional. History starts diverging in the 1870’s when the Yellowstone volcano wipes out North America and causes a nuclear-like winter. World War I is decided with nuclear weapons. (The Germans lose.) The British Empire may wane, but does not come apart. A biotech process is invented that changes human evolution by creating two additional species. The ‘Bund’ are the new homo superior species. They’re designer humans. They segregate themselves and quickly begin to diverge from humanity. The compare and contrast between the Bund’s technology and the old-style, human, 50’s “nuclearpunk” was brilliant. Chickies were an accidentally created human-like species considered a sub-human, invasive nuisance. (I liked it!) Then there are old-style humans like Stuart and his family.

Plot was deep. I counted five (5) sub-plots before I threw-up my literary hands and stopped counting. Having been published in the UK in 2018, I continually tried to find BREXIT themes in the story. (That was like searching for faces in the clouds.) There was also a complex use of symbols. My literary symbol-recognition wetware twigged, many times, but I couldn’t decipher all of them. For example, the Chickie ‘cornhusk doll’ Stuart packed around made little sense to me. At its most superficial level, the story is the Uptown Girl trope. The working class, but capable young, Yorkshire guy (Stuart) in uni falls for the young, rich, homo superior girl, even though he knows that she's out of his league. Stuart’s family and a very 50’s British class dynamic is woven into the story. There’s the boy gets girl, boy loses girl plot in-action. However, there is enough spin to distract you. For example, the girl is already lost when the story begins, but the reader gets flashbacks to see the course of their relationship. Things don’t end well. The world ends in interspecies warfare. (Old-style humans lose.) Set this in an alt-1950’s world in social, technological, and political upheaval. Pacing was good, but felt a bit rushed at the end.

This is literary science fiction-- not an sf yarn. There were some parts of the story that I really liked, for example the alt-history world building. I also thought the author’s wordsmithing was very good. However, I was a bit frustrated with knowing there were parts of the story I just wasn’t getting. Everyone is not going to like this book, but you wouldn’t be wasting your time to read it.

Folks interested in this author might want to read his book Wolves , which I found an easier read. A better British alt-history novel might be The Alteration , which is also an easier read.

[Steve Gillway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ballardian type tale told with a more emotional edge. I found the concoction of time and culture both comforting, the northern coal fire, pub etc, and beguiling, the secretive cult(with racist overtones) and different human forms etc. This book leaves you thinking and it will take some time to digest fully.

[Ella (The Story Collector) · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be totally honest, this book had me pretty confused. I don’t really know what happened or why, or even when the book is meant to be set. Just about the only things I understood were the location and who the main characters were (although I still don’t fully understand what the Bundists are). Because of that, writing my own synopsis is kind of impossible.

Some sections of this book are written in the second person, which is unusual and I really liked it. However, I think this contributed in a big way to my lack of comprehension. It made the book harder to follow and I really struggled to stay focussed while reading.

I did enjoy the parts I was able to understand. The Smoke contains some really interesting and dark concepts, which I absolutely loved. It’s super intriguing with very complex themes. I would say it is worth a read, but requires levels of concentration that I did not give it to fully enjoy.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Jrubino · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, let me point out the annoying usage of the second person narrative: "You find yourself wondering" or "You get up from the bed" etc. I suppose it’s meant to be an echo of the quainter 1800s style, but in reality it is simply a constant distraction.

Yet even beyond that bad decision, the plot is so convoluted. Alt History can be interesting (and fun) but this is such a mishmash of events that nothing seems real. Could be Earth. Could be any other planet. It doesn’t matter because nothing seems connected. This defeats the whole purpose of Alt History. In this novel, I don’t wonder at how subtle tweaks can ripple into huge changes; I only struggle to understand why Ings bothered to root this in any of Earth’s history at all.

[yingying · Rating 1 out of 5]

dnf 😭 i couldn’t read more than 12 pages LOL. i didn’t like the way it was written, it was rather dull sorry

[Ian Mond · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Smoke, Simon Ings takes familiar science fiction ingredients – alternate history, immortality, genetic manipulation/mutation, space exploration and body swapping – and bakes a magnificent, albeit utterly insane, cake. If you were pitching this novel to a Hollywood executive… well you wouldn’t… but if you were you’d say it’s set in an alternate history where the Second World War never happened, and Yiddish socialists took over the world. That’s without mentioning the truly weird stuff, a toss-up between the creation of a new species from dead first World War soldiers or a piss-take of Gerry Anderson’s UFO.

The remarkable thing is all these elements come together. Yes, the chickies (the name for the mutant species) are a little underdeveloped, I felt there was more to their story, but overall it’s astonishingly coherent. It’s because each of these elements is in service of telling a story about the wonders, the drawbacks and the existential crisis of post-humanism. Rather than apply a utopian gloss where humanity transcends to the next stage of evolution, Ings argues that, as is often the case with progress, good people will be left behind, except this time it’s all of us, or at least those of us who aren’t Bund. This is very much a novel about class, about the haves and have-nots, about the imposition of a new paradigm on a world that wasn’t expecting it.

There’s also something confronting about the substitution of Nazis with ubermensch Jews. Yes, the Bund is very different to the rabbinical Judaism they’ve repudiated, they don’t resemble me in any way shape or form and yet even in Ings counterfactual, the Bund face garden variety anti-semitism. No matter how much they distance themselves, no matter that the word Jew is no longer spoken, the Bund are identified as Jews by those who loathe them (which appears to be many people). And given how far the Bund will go to impose their vision of the future, you could certainly read the novel as saying that we would have been better off with the Holocaust, unless, that is, you see the Bund’s version of post-humanism as something to strive for. (Not that it’s an either-or equation, but the novel does lend itself to this sort of comparison). I did joke (to myself) that The Smoke might, be the most anti-semitic book ever written. It certainly a provocative book that’s worthy of a much deeper analysis then I provide here. Again, Ings has left me perplexed, excited, horrified and thoughtful.

[Phoenix Scholz-Krishna · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was... definitely different. Ings' style is enjoyable to read, and/but his books are always devastating to some degree (and, Z and I agree, so far have never really been books that we feel like re-reading). My favourite things in this one were the best shift in narrative perspective I've ever come across (right as you turn from page 63 to page 64) and a long passage that reminded me of M. John Harrison's alien event site in the Empty Space trilogy (p. 145/146). I also really liked the final juxtaposition/metamorphosis.

ETA: In addition to the final page/paragraph, which I liked so much, this book also contains the ultimate sublime moment of confrontation and - without posting spoilers - salvation. I'm in awe.

[Arend · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel that has so much going for it: excellent writing (some dazzling use of second-person, mimicking the bewilderment of the protagonist in his alternative version of Britain), frank engagement with class, race, and family, and ideas that don’t go where you naively would expect them to go, and poetic plot development (use of the Aeneid is spot on). It is a science fiction novel that is a worthy scion of Brave New World, though not with the same clarity or emotional impact. It was mostly the relationships that missed the mark for me, feeling more constructed than organically grown.

[Sue Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much going on without any coherence. Second person narration is ok but masturbating, monsters, chickies, zombies didn’t impress me. The alternate history is intriguing but I wanted more development. Same for the Bund.

[French Giant · Rating 1 out of 5]

What did I just read and why did I insist on slogging through it?

[Jack Deighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

We start on a space vehicle on which the brother of protagonist Stuart Lanyon is about to take off from Woomera – powered by successive explosions of atom bombs underneath it blasting it into space. This is something of a distraction however, though a signifier of an altered history where Yellowstone erupted in 1874, immolating North America, and a Great War was ended in 1916 after the atomic bombing of Berlin.

The main meat of the story is the ramifications of the discovery of the Gurwitsch ray – biophotonic weak ultraviolet pulses passing from cell to cell in living things, each creature with its own characteristic emissions, orchestrating development, leading to the ability of humanity to sculpt organic forms at will. Hence we are in the age of speciation of mankind. The dead of the Great War battlefields were subjected to Gurwitsch’s ray, producing strange organisms known as chickies which are able to exert sexual allure among other abilities, a technocratic intellectually superior elite called the Bund has arisen in Eastern Europe and dominates world affairs.

The weird aspects of all this are underlined by Ings’s story-telling, part of the novel being narrated in the second person, though the down to Earth sections are more traditional first person and some interludes are in third. Though the background details seem to sit oddly with one another - a thoroughly industrial Yorkshire can feel more like the 1930s, a television series more signifies the early 1960s, parts of London are dominated by ultra-modern architecture – Ings manages to hold them together. The setting is occasionally reminiscent of Andrew Crumey’s Sputnik Caledonia with the merest hint of Ballard thrown in for extra alienation.

At the novel’s heart is the love story between Stuart and Bund citizen Fel, aka Felicine Chernoy, daughter of Georgy, inventor of the Chernoy Process which utilises Gurwitsch’s ray to enable rebirth. Stuart’s mother, dying of cancer, undergoes this treatment and is reconstituted as an infant. A curious phenomenon to behold, this, a child with an adult’s memories, behaving in unchild-like ways - and subject to unthinking prejudice. Stuart and Fel’s different backgrounds lend their affair the attributes of all star-crossed lover stories.

The characters are well drawn but despite their supposedly greater intellects the two members of the Bund shown here - Fel and her father – do not seem significantly different from humans as we know them. Stuart does though in his narration refer to his father as Bob and mother as Betty, which is a touch unusual.

Ings’s vision here is a particular one, at once curiously fantastic and yet also recognisable, a flight of fancy (several flights if you like) but utterly grounded.in human emotions. The Smoke goes to show that Science Fiction continues to produce work of which those detractors who dismiss it without ever sampling it assume it to be incapable.

[Ben Thurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess The Smoke might be come to be seen as a post-Brexit, English, novel, rather than merely a science fiction novel. The world, and particularly the Britain, Ings builds in his alternate future is as recognisable as it is divergent. The United States never rose to global dominance but was instead devastated by the Yellowstone eruption of 1874, World War I was ended early in Europe through the atomic bombing of Berlin, World War II and The Holocaust never happened, and the invention of the Gurwitsch ray by a Jewish Soviet scientist has created both the hypersexual human hybrids known as Chickies whose aphrodysiac/dyonisiac influence shapes both this world and the in more intimate ways the characters of this story, and also been used to create a transhuman (almost übermensch) collective known as "The Bund", scattered remnants of the Jewish Labor Bund living in enclaves in most of the world's major cities – who have achieved almost alien increases in intelligence. Yet we inhabit an England which is divided by class, seeking to stave off sexual and other revolutions, jingoistically overcompensating for perceived slights or unacknowledged failures, at the mercy of forces that are barely comprehensible, let alone containable.

Plus ça change.

I won't attempt a plot summary, because it would be difficult, a little beside the point for what is a sci-fi, roman-a-clef, elegy hybrid and also because there are some aspects to the plot that are questioned within later narrative frames – whereby the shifts from third-person to second-person to first-person narration both expand and unsettle earlier understandings. It's a messy and sprawling novel in some ways, and explores personal relationships with believability even within its increasingly fantastical world. The racial othering of technological progress and economic progress is extremely uncomfortable, which is (I take/hope) Ings' point. Antisemitism is built into the narrative structure but profoundly questioned as Ings portrays in a transformed world the same personal and political divides that fuel in our own world such destructive insularity, racism and violent annihilationism.

Occasionally puzzling and frustrating, often disquieting, sometimes horrifying, The Smoke never fails to be interesting.

[Doreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a lot of novels and it is perishing rare for me to feel genuinely intimidated by the intellect of an author but here we are! Simon Ings' terrifying intelligence is palpable throughout the pages of The Smoke, with my only quibble being why London is called such, as the text doesn't seem to offer any explanation. Is this a British thing that has eluded me as a foreigner, albeit an Anglophile?

Anyway, a bright if otherwise ordinary young man named Stu breaks up with his girlfriend, Fel, the daughter of a prominent scientist who has pioneered a means of prolonging life. Stu and Fel lived in The Smoke, near The Bund, as the colony of Fel's people -- a hyper-intelligent race who are evolving to hyper-efficiency -- is known. Years ago, Stu had an unsettling encounter with a member of another of the human races, known somewhat disparagingly as Chickies, that continues to haunt him. Stu's family begins to fall apart as war and destruction loom, and Stu finds himself at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

Mr Ings switches masterfully from third- to second- to first-person narratives and back again in a stylistic carnival ride that takes us from alternate history to space opera to classical mythology homage, all the while touching on class conflicts (in a world cheerfully devoid of America with all its complicated geopolitical neuroses,) anti-Semitism and the sociopolitical ramifications of advancing technology. It is at once an homage to classic British SF and a weirdly bold paean to love, tho not perhaps in the way you'd expect. Personally, I thought the main weakness of the book was in Stu and Fel's relationship. Like everyone else in the novel, I had no idea why she loved him.

The Smoke is a truly weird, profoundly intelligent science fiction novel that dares to extrapolate a richness of both wonders and horrors from our own modern world. Pick it up and prepare to be dazzled by its sheer inventiveness.

Interview with Simon Ings to come soon on The Frumious Consortium!

[Rhiannon Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick FYI before we begin this review...

You know when you're a kid and you're minding your own business, just sitting down somewhere behaving, and then out of nowhere your older sibling comes along and sideswipes your entire head with a giant, heavy, feather pillow, knocking you into the floor? And before you even knew what happened, they just keep hitting you with the pillow? That's what this book will do to you if you're not carefully paying attention. 

To be completely honest, there is a lot going on in those pages. This novel is not for everyone. However, Simon Ings has clearly grasped and delivered to his readers an unmistakable grief and the loss of any need to go on. Those are emotions I find hard to describe when I'm writing and I know other authors do too. To do this well is commendable, particularly in an alternative history setting. 

But, reader beware. It is extremely easy to get completely lost in this book. As a matter of fact, I've had it on my night stand a few months and it has taken me a while to put myself into the right head space to read the story and be able to give it the attention it deserves. That does NOT mean I didn't like it or couldn't get into it, but alternately that after reading a fair bit I realized I needed to be able to concentrate in order to not get completely lost. Books with later release dates were finished before this one as The Smoke is not a particularly easy read. Not by any measure. 

With most difficult tasks, though, I found the reward to be satisfying. Characterization and writing were both wonderful and I enjoyed the plot, too. The story will break your heart if you're not careful. 

For a reader only just beginning to enjoy the science fiction genre, if you're looking for a novel to get your literary feet wet, maybe try something else until you're ready. Or maybe buy it read it slowly in order to keep track of what's really happening within the plot. I most certainly do give my recommendation, though. Well done, Simon Ings. 

[Kriegslok · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I found a cassette of Third Kingdom, a popular if rather overwrought radio drama that imagined the state of continental Europe had Germany's most notorious post-war chancellor not choked on that grape."

'The Smoke' is an alternate history piece of sci-fi. Britain is stuck in the 1950s with all its smoke, poverty and misery. That is except for the Bundists whose global technological prowess has made its mark globally and whose hi-tech cities sit uncomfortably in their host countries. The Second World War has not happened but the world is still reeling from the ravages of the First, and its literal mutant offspring.

Stuart is an architect working the old way with paper, pencils and drawing boards and there are quite a lot of pleasing architectural references in the work. He has become entangled in a relationship with Fel, a Bundist living among the general population of London. This fraught relationship carries the novel and is mirrored on a larger scale by the unequal competition between the Bundists and non-Bundists, especially in the great race for space.

This is an interesting read. There is a lot going on but some of it never seemed fully formed, some seemed unexplained and some things I wasn't quite sure why they were there. Perhaps something that needs re-reading. I was also uncomfortable with the presentation of the "Bund" (historically The Bund was a Yiddish founded Jewish Socialist Organisation committed to a secular Jewish nationalism rooted in Central Europe), the presentation in Ings fiction did not sit comfortably with me.

That said this is an interesting and cleverly crafted work that is certainly worth reading, even if, at the last page, you end up wondering what it is you've just read!

[John Rennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that you admire for the literary artistry involved. The characters are all rather distant and hard to empathise with, and there isn't much in the way of plot.

The book is set in an alternative universe where the USA was just about destroyed by an eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano in the 19th century. Then atomic weapons were developed in time for the first world war and left all of Europe slightly radioactive. From the ashes two new species have emerged, the technologically advanced Bund and the apparently (slight spoiler there :-) primitive Chickies. The book is set in the UK and follows the rather hapless protagonist Stuart Lanyon through this alternative landscape.

It's an interesting book because the author manages this slightly surreal setting very well. Indeed the standard of the writing is excellent. But it's not an involving book that pulls you in. I quite enjoyed it, but it hasn't filled me with any great desire to read Ings' other books.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's possible that I'm just getting lazy and easily distracted. It's likely that my attention span is shrinking, and I need to choose more British cozies to lull my brain back into a comfortable space, not challenge it with a narrative that is nonlinear and shifts perspective without warning or signal. Maybe I used to be able to appreciate this sort of thing; I don't recall. The story is certainly an interesting puzzle, and I did enjoy parts of the book. But I'm going to have to say, two stars is sugar-coating my reaction. It normally does not take me this long to read a sci-fi book, but I kept putting it aside. That's generally not a good sign. I wanted to like it, but I kept finding myself wishing it was finished already so I could read something else. Puritan guilt is not a sufficient goad to make me complete a read, and it did get better (or I got more attuned to the rhythm) as it got nearer the end. Do I recommend it? Not really.

[Timothy Nott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely. Really enjoyed the Scifi-urban-fantasy genre-bend and the fact that there wasn't a nice simple happy ending. It felt a little ripped-from-the-headlines given the pandemic -- especially given how Israel has left everyone else in the dust in terms of vaccination despite having a large portion of its population opposed to vaccines.

Other, more intentional parallels around populist prejudice ring true, as well. We are seeing what happens when a group of people feels left behind by a quickly changing world. Is it the responsibility of those who are moving forward to bring along everyone else? Or, is it progress at any cost? If the latter, do the 'victors' eliminate potential eventual competition?

[Mab · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a deeply odd book, and I can't really decide if it's odd in an interesting way or a dissatisfying way. It's a murky soup of ideas, and it does at least achieve the true strangeness of an alternative world that speculative fiction so rarely does. It's also got some interesting things to say about families, class, the march of progress and humanity, and the prose reads easily and well. But on the other hand, very weird, a little distasteful, and generally just... odd. Also flirting with antisemitic ideas in a way that might be off-putting? But I couldn't quite parse it well enough to decide, because there was so much else going on.

[Falbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read, and I love the idea of the Bund and their blindingly rapid advance towards the future, but the genius lies in the take of a character who has not been affected by the 'biophotonic ray', who is the protagonist of the story. However, his character is just a little too self-absorbed for my taste and I just can't develop much feeling for him in the way I think the author intended. Definitely worth a read, but nothing I'll be spending much time thinking about in the future.

[Vincent Hernot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good idea, with immediate and obvious symbolic meaning.
Good plot, and good setting: nice idea to use the 19th-C-like public school like that, with the rise of industrialisation, its colour code and its social meaning, the opposition manual work/power-positioin etc.
AS usual things need to be resolved, which one might resent but it's done well here.
The only caveat is that such symbolism can feel slightly repetitive at times, but Ings has some good solutions for this, so...
Recommended.

[Vuk Trifkovic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to figure out the book. There are passages where it looks like yet another retelling of a very insular, British, class-obsessed story. There are passages which are just too "spot on" and too obvious. Yet, there are wonderfully weird twists that give it another dimension. Will make sure to read "Wolves" for sure...

[big mean jerk · Rating 4 out of 5]

That gif of Krusty saying "what the hell was that" but he's grinning instead of frowning.

[Caitlin G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review based on a finished copy provided by the publisher.

[Chris Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can be a confusing narrative to follow, dark and depressing at times, but also like going on a hallucinogenic experience. Relevant to current and future politics. Worth the time and effort.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really loved this book... the UFO TV show references, the bigger themes, and I really loved the plastic model kit scene. So much about this book appealed to me.

[Steen Ledet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid alternative history with playful narration.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this book, although I tried to engage with the story. I realized I was avoiding reading it. Cool concepts but the story was not told in a way that drew me in.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book is interesting but it was far too vague and metaphysical for my taste.

[Marilyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like it. I found the narrator in the first part very difficult, it was a relief when the narrator changed. The story was disconcerting.