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Perfidious Albion
LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2019
In Edmundsbury, a small town in eastern England, fear and loathing are on the rise. Brexit has happened and the ramifications are real. Grass-roots, right-wing political party 'England Always' is fomenting hatred. The residents of a failing housing estate are being cleared from their homes. A multinational tech company is making inroads into the infrastructure. A controversial tweet; a series of ill-judged think pieces; a riot of opinions - suddenly Edmundsbury is no longer the peaceful town it had always imagined itself to be.
In Edmundsbury, a small town in eastern England, fear and loathing are on the rise. Brexit has happened and the ramifications are real. Grass-roots, right-wing political party 'England Always' is fomenting hatred. The residents of a failing housing estate are being cleared from their homes. A multinational tech company is making inroads into the infrastructure. A controversial tweet; a series of ill-judged think pieces; a riot of opinions - suddenly Edmundsbury is no longer the peaceful town it had always imagined itself to be.
400 pages, Paperback
First published July 31, 2018
93 people are currently reading
1824 people want to read
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January 9, 2021
High-Tech, Low-Thought
Whatever else advanced technology pretends to be, it is mainly a way to get ahead, to advance oneself beyond the lesser hoi polloi who know nothing about its mysterious trade. The whole point of technology is that it prevents serious discussion of anything - including itself - by creating an arcane genre. Consequently the technology permeating our world is not so much an instrument of corporate or personal power as it is a disease invading the minds of its promoters, a vector for stupidity.
It’s easy to forget that modern technology is profoundly procedural. It is a bureaucracy in a box that demands precise conformity with its rules. Those involved with technology are, or at least become, obsessively conservative. Their lives depend entirely on keeping everything exactly the way it is, on following the rules laid out by technology. This, of course, contradicts their self-image as dynamic changers of society. All they really want is a bigger share of the pie. They volunteer as cogs to get it.
None of this is new. Like everything touched by human desire, modern technology has been rationalised as ‘transformative,’ ‘life-enhancing,’ and ‘socially revolutionary.’ It is none of these things. And the folk who spout the gospel of technology aren’t very different from those television preachers who promise immediate and eternal prosperity in return for ten bucks a month. They want your mind in order to get your money. So they fill your mind with nonsense to create an opinion-sphere.
The opinion-sphere operates according to the law of increasing spiritual Entropy. The more opinions posted on blogs, emails, YouTube, and message apps, the greater the spiritual Entropy. Intellect becomes increasingly uniform so that actual communication decreases. Intellectual work, that is to say, thought, is impossible because there is no information differential. What remains is the background radiation of deceitful self-interest, pursued relentlessly... and pointlessly.
Am I mistaken or does Byers read like a 21st century Charles Williams?
Whatever else advanced technology pretends to be, it is mainly a way to get ahead, to advance oneself beyond the lesser hoi polloi who know nothing about its mysterious trade. The whole point of technology is that it prevents serious discussion of anything - including itself - by creating an arcane genre. Consequently the technology permeating our world is not so much an instrument of corporate or personal power as it is a disease invading the minds of its promoters, a vector for stupidity.
It’s easy to forget that modern technology is profoundly procedural. It is a bureaucracy in a box that demands precise conformity with its rules. Those involved with technology are, or at least become, obsessively conservative. Their lives depend entirely on keeping everything exactly the way it is, on following the rules laid out by technology. This, of course, contradicts their self-image as dynamic changers of society. All they really want is a bigger share of the pie. They volunteer as cogs to get it.
None of this is new. Like everything touched by human desire, modern technology has been rationalised as ‘transformative,’ ‘life-enhancing,’ and ‘socially revolutionary.’ It is none of these things. And the folk who spout the gospel of technology aren’t very different from those television preachers who promise immediate and eternal prosperity in return for ten bucks a month. They want your mind in order to get your money. So they fill your mind with nonsense to create an opinion-sphere.
The opinion-sphere operates according to the law of increasing spiritual Entropy. The more opinions posted on blogs, emails, YouTube, and message apps, the greater the spiritual Entropy. Intellect becomes increasingly uniform so that actual communication decreases. Intellectual work, that is to say, thought, is impossible because there is no information differential. What remains is the background radiation of deceitful self-interest, pursued relentlessly... and pointlessly.
Am I mistaken or does Byers read like a 21st century Charles Williams?
June 20, 2019
This is a sharp, clever and often very funny satire, which extrapolates the current febrile political climate in Britain into Edmundsbury, a small town in England in the near future a few years after Brexit.
The first chapter introduces a couple who are central to the plot via a party for pseudo-intellectual bloggers and influencers - the vacuous and largely nonsensical nature of the conversation is funny but can be a little difficult to follow. Robert is a blogger, and his partner Jess has become frustrated with his inability to engage with her, and has invented a couple of sock puppets to challenge and rile him via comments on his blog.
There is also Hugo Bennington, a popular right wing commenter for a thinly veiled Daily Mail who runs a populist political party, and his slightly sinister sidekick Teddy, a new media expert whose diet consists entirely of a new scientifically developed liquid.
Robert has been investigating a local housing project in which a run-down social housing block has been taken over by a company which wants to get rid of its tenants to make room for redevelopment - here we meet Darkin, an old widow barely able to sustain himself who is a gullible victim for the kind of rabble rousing hate messages that Bennington peddles. Early Genesis fans may find this housing sub-plot reminiscent of "Get 'Em Out by Friday".
The other main character is Trina, who has a job in a high tech company which has developed a micro-task management system in which employees only understand a small part of the systems that monitor them. Trina is drawn into the world of Robert and Hugo, and into trouble with her company, when she reads one of Bennington's columns and posts a comment including the hashtag whitemalegenocide.
This is a typical quote - DeCoverley is a public school type defending his caricatured sense of entitlement:
"'I've literally spent my whole life sharpening my mind,' said DeCoverley. 'And now I'm supposed to apologise for that?'
'No way,' said Robert, ignoring the obvious point that if DeCoverley had really spent his whole life sharpening his mind there would now be nothing left except a whittled stub and a heap of shavings."
The ending will divide people - some may see it as clever, but to me it seemed a bit of a cop-out. The other element I struggled a little with was the apparent independence of the companies and politicians in the story from wider international concerns. I accept that this is partly to simplify the narrative and create a functional microcosm, but this does not reflect the reality of British political culture.
A very enjoyable read nonetheless, reminiscent of Jonathan Coe's best work.
The first chapter introduces a couple who are central to the plot via a party for pseudo-intellectual bloggers and influencers - the vacuous and largely nonsensical nature of the conversation is funny but can be a little difficult to follow. Robert is a blogger, and his partner Jess has become frustrated with his inability to engage with her, and has invented a couple of sock puppets to challenge and rile him via comments on his blog.
There is also Hugo Bennington, a popular right wing commenter for a thinly veiled Daily Mail who runs a populist political party, and his slightly sinister sidekick Teddy, a new media expert whose diet consists entirely of a new scientifically developed liquid.
Robert has been investigating a local housing project in which a run-down social housing block has been taken over by a company which wants to get rid of its tenants to make room for redevelopment - here we meet Darkin, an old widow barely able to sustain himself who is a gullible victim for the kind of rabble rousing hate messages that Bennington peddles. Early Genesis fans may find this housing sub-plot reminiscent of "Get 'Em Out by Friday".
The other main character is Trina, who has a job in a high tech company which has developed a micro-task management system in which employees only understand a small part of the systems that monitor them. Trina is drawn into the world of Robert and Hugo, and into trouble with her company, when she reads one of Bennington's columns and posts a comment including the hashtag whitemalegenocide.
This is a typical quote - DeCoverley is a public school type defending his caricatured sense of entitlement:
"'I've literally spent my whole life sharpening my mind,' said DeCoverley. 'And now I'm supposed to apologise for that?'
'No way,' said Robert, ignoring the obvious point that if DeCoverley had really spent his whole life sharpening his mind there would now be nothing left except a whittled stub and a heap of shavings."
The ending will divide people - some may see it as clever, but to me it seemed a bit of a cop-out. The other element I struggled a little with was the apparent independence of the companies and politicians in the story from wider international concerns. I accept that this is partly to simplify the narrative and create a functional microcosm, but this does not reflect the reality of British political culture.
A very enjoyable read nonetheless, reminiscent of Jonathan Coe's best work.
June 19, 2019
A book that is zeitgeisty to the point of prescience (given that both Grenfell Towers and Cambridge Analytica happened after the book had been largely conceived)
The book imagines a post-Brexit Britain, and features a clear UKIP, Nigel Farage and Daily Mail equivalent as well as a Jordan Peterson type character. At times the satire on these characters can be a little heavy handed (and in particular I felt that the key act leading to the downfall of the Farage character was unnecessary) – but the book is much wider than that.
In particular the book has a real focus on two areas: the world of opinion columnists, below the line comments and twitter storms; the tech firm driven world of data harvesting and gamification and the insidious nature of both the intrusion of that world into blurring the private/public boundaries, and removing agency from people’s lives.
The first I felt was very strong – and this book could, and given both its conventional literary form and UK relevance, should have replaced Sabrina on the Booker longlist. The second was weaker – and perhaps overburdened an already bursting book, as well as ending in a style that reminded me of a Doctor Who plot resolution (lots of words and concepts that perhaps cannot stand up to much logical analysis). However in both cases the author’s real aim is to examine less the trends themselves than their human impact, both on individuals and on relationships – and this part is very strong indeed. Further I enjoyed the way that the author examined what was changing in society but also drew these apparent changes back to more ancient themes – for example how the nature of online personalities is in fact a continuation of the multiple roles that people have always performed in different social milieu.
Overall I found this both a hugely enjoyable and thought provoking book – not everything in it works but given how much it is attempting, even a partial success rate puts it well above what most other books attempt to achieve.
The book imagines a post-Brexit Britain, and features a clear UKIP, Nigel Farage and Daily Mail equivalent as well as a Jordan Peterson type character. At times the satire on these characters can be a little heavy handed (and in particular I felt that the key act leading to the downfall of the Farage character was unnecessary) – but the book is much wider than that.
In particular the book has a real focus on two areas: the world of opinion columnists, below the line comments and twitter storms; the tech firm driven world of data harvesting and gamification and the insidious nature of both the intrusion of that world into blurring the private/public boundaries, and removing agency from people’s lives.
The first I felt was very strong – and this book could, and given both its conventional literary form and UK relevance, should have replaced Sabrina on the Booker longlist. The second was weaker – and perhaps overburdened an already bursting book, as well as ending in a style that reminded me of a Doctor Who plot resolution (lots of words and concepts that perhaps cannot stand up to much logical analysis). However in both cases the author’s real aim is to examine less the trends themselves than their human impact, both on individuals and on relationships – and this part is very strong indeed. Further I enjoyed the way that the author examined what was changing in society but also drew these apparent changes back to more ancient themes – for example how the nature of online personalities is in fact a continuation of the multiple roles that people have always performed in different social milieu.
Overall I found this both a hugely enjoyable and thought provoking book – not everything in it works but given how much it is attempting, even a partial success rate puts it well above what most other books attempt to achieve.
September 27, 2019
Sam Byers' Perfidious Albion is a novel so sharp you can shave with it.
Seriously - the satire here is so keen that it hurts, its dark cutting edge so fine that it would drive a Japanese master-swordmaker into abandoning his craft, melting his katanas down and turning his skills to making spoons.
This book is a goddamn riot of great ideas and piercing observations, packed with a cast of preening pseudo-intellectuals, menacing corporations, and online manipulators.
So! Welcome to post-brexit Britain. The deed has been done. Buccaneering Britain has left the EU and sailed off into the bright future of piratical mediocrity and irrelevance its politicians seem hell-bent on guaranteeing.
And what a future it is! In the fictional town of Edmundsbury casual work seems to be the norm, anti-foreigner sentiment is strong and rising, and nativist political parties along with it. A failed housing estate – Larchwood - is in the sights of a developer for being ‘reimagined’ as a technologically driven e-community, however the remaining few residents who refuse to move out are holding the process up.
Larchwood and its holdouts will become the central stage for a surreal drama that will both destroy lives and launch careers while giving Byers the chance to show us a stunningly accurate reflection of the world of online opinion, internet outrage and self-serving commentators that make up the bulk of 21st Century discourse.
Have you ever wondered what goes on in the head of an opinion troll? How the Bill O’Reilly’s, Tucker Carlsons and Andrew Bolts of the world justify their bilious and inflammatory rantings? Or perhaps how people who, often beginning as genuine journalists and ordinary people, find themselves in the position of regularly spewing polarising poison in newspaper opinion pieces, on talk shows and across talkback radio?
If so Perfidious Albion is your ticket into the dark and twisted psyches of such media creatures. Two such examples of the species – fully formed malevolent trollumnist Hugo Bennington, and embryonic opinion-wielder Robert Townsend provide insights into the different life stages of Medius Horribilus.
Hugo Bennington is a pompous, nativist ass of a man who seems clearly to be a fictional Nigel Farage. A widely read right-wing hack, Bennington is a man whose bloated, utterly self-pitying opinion of himself (yep, definitely Farage) has led him to stand for political office with the assistance of the ‘England Always’ part.
Robert Townsend is also an opinion writer, but a more right-on, fight the good fight kind of guy (at least in his own head) than Bennington. He too has latched onto the happenings at the Larchwood housing estate, sensing an opportunity to publicly fight for a worthy cause.
In a strange online dance with Robert Townsend is his partner, Jess, herself a victim of a past misogynistic internet pile that bore all the usual subtlety and grace of such occurrences (see: Gamergate and Pathetic Internet Loserbros).
Jess has grown frustrated with her and Robert’s inability to connect, and the shallow direction of his writing. In response she has set up a pseudonym under which she writes scathing online comments beneath his articles, comments that have developed their own following, driving even more traffic to her partner’s work.
Robert however, is obsessed with Jess’ sockpuppet and her criticism – how is it so accurate? Why is it so cutting? He has become both terrified of and enraged with this spectral adversary who knows his weak spots so well. His obsession with Jess’s alter-ego begins to push him to do and write dark things he would never have suspected he had the capacity for.
Finally, working at a tech company with its own shady interest in Larchwood is Trina, a coder/techie who manages the digital piece-workers that slave away for her corporate masters, using an Orwellian program of her own design. Trina is about to get sucked into a vortex of internet hate where she, Robert, Hugo and Jess will all be swirling around the digital drain together.
This is a stunning novel of our age of Twitter bile, horrifically misogynistic internet comment sections, doxing, death threats and toxic media personalities. I ate it up, constantly highlighting Byers’ keen observations of people, personalities and places. You’ll feel like you know Byers characters well, and the chain-store-masquerading-as-an-independent-café places that they frequent.
The ending is the only part of this book that I didn’t love. It seems a touch too clever for me, too easy and quick a way to end a story that I felt would better have finished on a bum note of grim awfulness. Such an ending would have accurately reflected the tone of the novel, and the grotesque world of inflammatory opinion and internet bile it accurately satirizes.
Read it. It’s Brilliant.
Four and half opinionated narcissists out of five.
Seriously - the satire here is so keen that it hurts, its dark cutting edge so fine that it would drive a Japanese master-swordmaker into abandoning his craft, melting his katanas down and turning his skills to making spoons.
This book is a goddamn riot of great ideas and piercing observations, packed with a cast of preening pseudo-intellectuals, menacing corporations, and online manipulators.
So! Welcome to post-brexit Britain. The deed has been done. Buccaneering Britain has left the EU and sailed off into the bright future of piratical mediocrity and irrelevance its politicians seem hell-bent on guaranteeing.
And what a future it is! In the fictional town of Edmundsbury casual work seems to be the norm, anti-foreigner sentiment is strong and rising, and nativist political parties along with it. A failed housing estate – Larchwood - is in the sights of a developer for being ‘reimagined’ as a technologically driven e-community, however the remaining few residents who refuse to move out are holding the process up.
Larchwood and its holdouts will become the central stage for a surreal drama that will both destroy lives and launch careers while giving Byers the chance to show us a stunningly accurate reflection of the world of online opinion, internet outrage and self-serving commentators that make up the bulk of 21st Century discourse.
Have you ever wondered what goes on in the head of an opinion troll? How the Bill O’Reilly’s, Tucker Carlsons and Andrew Bolts of the world justify their bilious and inflammatory rantings? Or perhaps how people who, often beginning as genuine journalists and ordinary people, find themselves in the position of regularly spewing polarising poison in newspaper opinion pieces, on talk shows and across talkback radio?
If so Perfidious Albion is your ticket into the dark and twisted psyches of such media creatures. Two such examples of the species – fully formed malevolent trollumnist Hugo Bennington, and embryonic opinion-wielder Robert Townsend provide insights into the different life stages of Medius Horribilus.
Hugo Bennington is a pompous, nativist ass of a man who seems clearly to be a fictional Nigel Farage. A widely read right-wing hack, Bennington is a man whose bloated, utterly self-pitying opinion of himself (yep, definitely Farage) has led him to stand for political office with the assistance of the ‘England Always’ part.
Robert Townsend is also an opinion writer, but a more right-on, fight the good fight kind of guy (at least in his own head) than Bennington. He too has latched onto the happenings at the Larchwood housing estate, sensing an opportunity to publicly fight for a worthy cause.
In a strange online dance with Robert Townsend is his partner, Jess, herself a victim of a past misogynistic internet pile that bore all the usual subtlety and grace of such occurrences (see: Gamergate and Pathetic Internet Loserbros).
Jess has grown frustrated with her and Robert’s inability to connect, and the shallow direction of his writing. In response she has set up a pseudonym under which she writes scathing online comments beneath his articles, comments that have developed their own following, driving even more traffic to her partner’s work.
Robert however, is obsessed with Jess’ sockpuppet and her criticism – how is it so accurate? Why is it so cutting? He has become both terrified of and enraged with this spectral adversary who knows his weak spots so well. His obsession with Jess’s alter-ego begins to push him to do and write dark things he would never have suspected he had the capacity for.
Finally, working at a tech company with its own shady interest in Larchwood is Trina, a coder/techie who manages the digital piece-workers that slave away for her corporate masters, using an Orwellian program of her own design. Trina is about to get sucked into a vortex of internet hate where she, Robert, Hugo and Jess will all be swirling around the digital drain together.
This is a stunning novel of our age of Twitter bile, horrifically misogynistic internet comment sections, doxing, death threats and toxic media personalities. I ate it up, constantly highlighting Byers’ keen observations of people, personalities and places. You’ll feel like you know Byers characters well, and the chain-store-masquerading-as-an-independent-café places that they frequent.
The ending is the only part of this book that I didn’t love. It seems a touch too clever for me, too easy and quick a way to end a story that I felt would better have finished on a bum note of grim awfulness. Such an ending would have accurately reflected the tone of the novel, and the grotesque world of inflammatory opinion and internet bile it accurately satirizes.
Read it. It’s Brilliant.
Four and half opinionated narcissists out of five.
August 8, 2018
Sam Byers' sophomore novel (following the underrated Idiopathy) is that rare thing – a timely satire that is genuinely smart and genuinely funny. Unfortunately every attempt I make at describing it makes it sound awful (at one point I wrote down 'Adrian Mole meets Nathan Barley, written by Jonathan Coe') so you're just going to have to trust me on this.
It's about a couple who are falling apart, both of them engaging in secret online warfare against one another.
It's about a woman who games the system, takes on a toxic corporate environment and wins, only to find life at the top (or at least somewhere in the middle) is scarcely better.
It's about a right-wing politician who uses populist rhetoric as a mask for his own uncertainty, which in turn hides even worse impulses and urges.
It's about an elderly man who becomes an unlikely and unwilling symbol of something he doesn't fully understand.
It's about the housing crisis and the rise of dangerously unreliable 'flexible' work, represented here through the gamification of poverty on a supposedly revitalised housing estate.
It's about an activist group who, in threatening to expose individuals' internet histories, panic people into an ironic ramping-up of whatever it is they're trying to keep secret.
It's about a small town as a microcosm of British society, and whether 'small town' even means anything in an uber-connected age.
The various plot strands in Perfidious Albion are so seamlessly and cleverly interwoven, it feels like the product of years and years of writing, yet its subject matter is so up-to-the-minute it could have been written last week. Whether it will date badly, I guess time will tell. You'd better read it asap just in case.
Also has the best ending I've read this year – entirely unexpected, and fabulously done.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
It's about a couple who are falling apart, both of them engaging in secret online warfare against one another.
It's about a woman who games the system, takes on a toxic corporate environment and wins, only to find life at the top (or at least somewhere in the middle) is scarcely better.
It's about a right-wing politician who uses populist rhetoric as a mask for his own uncertainty, which in turn hides even worse impulses and urges.
It's about an elderly man who becomes an unlikely and unwilling symbol of something he doesn't fully understand.
It's about the housing crisis and the rise of dangerously unreliable 'flexible' work, represented here through the gamification of poverty on a supposedly revitalised housing estate.
It's about an activist group who, in threatening to expose individuals' internet histories, panic people into an ironic ramping-up of whatever it is they're trying to keep secret.
It's about a small town as a microcosm of British society, and whether 'small town' even means anything in an uber-connected age.
The various plot strands in Perfidious Albion are so seamlessly and cleverly interwoven, it feels like the product of years and years of writing, yet its subject matter is so up-to-the-minute it could have been written last week. Whether it will date badly, I guess time will tell. You'd better read it asap just in case.
Also has the best ending I've read this year – entirely unexpected, and fabulously done.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
September 30, 2018
Although ostensibly set after Britain leaves the EU, this novel evokes the current toxic cultural and political moment on the cusp of Brexit better than anything else I’ve found. As a result, it is difficult to read for any prolonged period. I kept having to pause for a breather, after paragraphs so appallingly convincing that it hurt to read them. The thesis here is: What if Brexit happened and changed absolutely nothing? The cast consists of a very thinly disguised Nigel Farage, several members of the commentariat, a couple of tech company employees, and the few remaining inhabitants of a decaying estate on the verge of redevelopment. All the action takes place in Edmundsbury, quite possibly a version of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Byers depicts twitterstorms, internet misogyny, dog whistle racism, and corporate manipulation with relentless, merciless clarity. Each character’s point of view is presented with complete conviction. At times, the dark humour made me laugh aloud; at other points I just muttered, “Oh fuck” to myself in horror. This novel captures a zeitgeist that I deliberately attempt to avoid, because it’s frightening and depressing. The fact that I nonetheless kept reading perfectly-titled ‘Perfidious Albion’ is a testament to the excellent writing and compelling narrative.
Rather than burbling superlatives, let me illustrate my praise for Byers’ remorseless examination of English media, culture, and social mores with some quotes.
This is straight out of Žižek’s 'Trouble in Paradise', which phrases it as, ‘What if, today, straight marriage is ‘the most dark and daring of all transgressions’?’ In fact, ‘Perfidious Albion’ managed the impressive feat of making the romantic relationship between two characters, Jess and Robert, absolutely compelling. Mainly because there is no actual romance whatsoever and it holds a mirror up to gender relations in 2018. The pair live together only in a spatial sense. At first, as Robert’s thought processes, activities, and motivations were introduced, I thought Jess should dump him. Later in the book, I began to think that murdering him might be more appropriate. The most viscerally shocking scenes in the book concern the decisions that Robert’s ego leads him to make. If only more literary fiction looked at relationships with such lucidity and nuance! Dinner with Jess and Robert, from the start of the book:
The geographically limited setting, which could have stifled the novel, actually enables the complex ecosystem of social media, old media, tech companies, and politics in the 21st century to be captured. At the macro scale, they become incomprehensibly huge and chaotic. At the micro level, some coherence can be found, albeit of a deeply alarming kind. On thinkpiece journalism:
Internet discourse in microcosm, discussing a sarcastic tweet:
UKIP, anatomised:
In the mind of Nigel F- sorry, Hugo Bennington:
Scenes in the tech company Green are equally well-observed and act as relative light relief from the dissection of misogyny. Byers mocks email and meeting etiquette very effectively:
I wondered how the ending of ‘Perfidious Albion’ could possibly live up to the high standard it set. On balance, I think Byers managed that. It is certainly made clear that Brexit, which is not discussed by any character at any point, has solved nothing whatsoever. This is a novel of our times and one that will definitely stay in my mind. If you want to know what the fuck is wrong with England in 2018, I recommend avoiding the news at weekends and reading ‘Perfidious Albion’ instead. It also has a beautiful cover, as the librarian noted while issuing it to me.
Rather than burbling superlatives, let me illustrate my praise for Byers’ remorseless examination of English media, culture, and social mores with some quotes.
Jess popped to the toilet to tweet. Back in the room, an assortment of indistinct men - bearded and earnest and flushed with credentials - talked at her or for her, but never quite to her.
“Of course,” she heard someone say, “It’s getting to the point where marriage is the last truly radical act.”
This was a recurrent theme. At every party a new last radical act. Faced with a future so rapid in its occurrence and uncertain in its shape, people clung to familiarity. Fearful of appearing retrograde, they refashioned their nostalgia as subversion. Home ownership was the truly last radical act. Monogamy was the last truly radical act. Parenting was the last truly radical act. Not wanting it all was the last truly radical act. Everything else, it seemed, was dead.
This is straight out of Žižek’s 'Trouble in Paradise', which phrases it as, ‘What if, today, straight marriage is ‘the most dark and daring of all transgressions’?’ In fact, ‘Perfidious Albion’ managed the impressive feat of making the romantic relationship between two characters, Jess and Robert, absolutely compelling. Mainly because there is no actual romance whatsoever and it holds a mirror up to gender relations in 2018. The pair live together only in a spatial sense. At first, as Robert’s thought processes, activities, and motivations were introduced, I thought Jess should dump him. Later in the book, I began to think that murdering him might be more appropriate. The most viscerally shocking scenes in the book concern the decisions that Robert’s ego leads him to make. If only more literary fiction looked at relationships with such lucidity and nuance! Dinner with Jess and Robert, from the start of the book:
While they ate, they talked about the day’s events on the web, asking each other if they’d seen this or that post, tracked this or that social media shitstorm, or caught a glimpse of whatever eye-rolling thinkpiece headline was currently whipping up derision across right-thinking networks. This being dinner, they selected things about which they could agree. Some digital-analogue distinctions, Jess thought, still applied. Online, the point was to court controversy. At home, you cherry-picked for accord.
The geographically limited setting, which could have stifled the novel, actually enables the complex ecosystem of social media, old media, tech companies, and politics in the 21st century to be captured. At the macro scale, they become incomprehensibly huge and chaotic. At the micro level, some coherence can be found, albeit of a deeply alarming kind. On thinkpiece journalism:
This, he was coming to understand, was the new reality of his job, and the natural endpoint of his career arc. He’d begun by reporting what was happening. He’d graduated from a focus on what was happening to a focus on what he thought about what was happening. From there, what was happening had come to have less and less bearing on what he thought, until all that mattered, to borrow a choice phrase from Lionel Groves, was that he thought at all. Now, what he thought was what was happening. His opinions and those of other were events unto themselves, supplanting their real-world counterparts and models. In this world, it didn’t actually matter what he thought, and mattered even less what people felt about it. What mattered was the nurturing and manipulation of an environment in which his thought could flourish, in which discussion was its own reality. Silas was right: hatred, pushback, dissent were all just modified matrices of the only things that meant anything: impact and volume.
Internet discourse in microcosm, discussing a sarcastic tweet:
”There’s a big difference between an allegorical bomb and a real one, Silas.”
“Yeah, maybe there is. And the difference is, in our line of business, only one really matters. You think if an actual bomb wiped out half the frigging population people would express outrage about it online? Do you think they’d even look online? To us, Robert, the allegorical bomb is the real bomb, and the real bomb is just an allegory. As far as opinion is concerned, this is a real bomb.”
UKIP, anatomised:
His entire career, his entire existence, was built on simplification. His critics assumed this was because Hugo was simple, but Hugo, who prided himself on not being as stupid as people seemed to believe, knew that his reliance on simplicity was one of the better examples of how astute he was able to be. In an ever-complexifying world, simplicity was a much sought-after and increasingly rare commodity, and people had a tendency to grab it when they found it. [...]
Hugo, in his columns, in his talking-head television appearances, in his careful deployment of what he very advisedly called common sense, had become adept at synthesising these instincts. When he talked of present-day England and the ways in which it both disappointed and terrified him, he made it clear he was regarding it in contrast to another, historical England, which had once made him proud and secure. When he decried political double-speak and lambasted his rivals for their inability to construct a simple policy that could be conveyed in a simple sentence to… he didn’t say simple people, of course, he said ordinary people… he was careful to communicate the idea of an implied alternative of clarity, directness. Through simplification, Hugo was selling reassurance. Through nostalgia, he was selling the political equivalent of escapism. And through reductive blame-mongering, he was, he knew, selling a potent combination of the two.
In the mind of Nigel F- sorry, Hugo Bennington:
This age of fucking sensitivity, he thought. What was he supposed to do - castrate himself? When he met a woman he fancied, he fantasised about shoving his dick in her face. When he met a woman he loathed, he also fantasised about shoving his dick in her face. Was that no longer normal? Was this something for which he was supposed to apologise?
This, he thought, was the society he lived in: a society where a decent, upstanding man could at any moment be lined up in front of what was effectively an internet firing squad and summarily executed for the simple crime of doing what he had always done: sowing fear; terrifying the cosseted, preening effete, and ultimately unrecognisable excuse for a nation that England had ultimately become.
Scenes in the tech company Green are equally well-observed and act as relative light relief from the dissection of misogyny. Byers mocks email and meeting etiquette very effectively:
Norbiton stuck his head round his office door.
“You three,” he said, “I’m calling a huddle. Right here. Right now.”
“You can’t,” said Bream, “You used your huddle quota this morning. Your allocation won’t reset for another twenty-four hours.”
“Are you kidding me?” said Norbiton, “Trina: confirm.”
“It’s twenty-four hours,” said Trina.
“Email me,” said Bream.
“Copy that,” said Holt.
“OK,” said Norbiton, “I’m going to play ball, but if I get a load of auto-responses I have to say a touch of negativity might start creeping into my day.”
Norbiton went back into his office and started pounding his keyboard. Trina logged on and fired up her email to find that Norbiton had sent a high-priority scheduling invite to her, Bream, and Holt.
“I didn’t have time to turn off my auto-response,” said Trina.
“Me neither,” said Bream, not making any sort of move towards his desk. Holt just shrugged. From Norbiton’s office a sort of war-cry went up.
I wondered how the ending of ‘Perfidious Albion’ could possibly live up to the high standard it set. On balance, I think Byers managed that. It is certainly made clear that Brexit, which is not discussed by any character at any point, has solved nothing whatsoever. This is a novel of our times and one that will definitely stay in my mind. If you want to know what the fuck is wrong with England in 2018, I recommend avoiding the news at weekends and reading ‘Perfidious Albion’ instead. It also has a beautiful cover, as the librarian noted while issuing it to me.
February 27, 2019
Post-Brexit Britain; a funny book that's actually funny; a Jonathan Coe novel that Jonathan Coe forgot to write because he's on fucking Twitter all the time. It's great.
March 21, 2019
Absolutely brilliant. This is more than just Balzac for the Sidewalk Labs meets Cambridge Analytica Precariat You Are The Product Move Fast Break Things Iterate and Sorry Bout The NeoNazis generation. This is a new kinda social realism done with old fashioned modernist style and phrase-by-phrase love-of-language Chutzpah.
Needs a re-read before a proper review or maybe even essay though. Haven't been this excited about social realism since Franzen's The 27th City—and look where that got me, I know, but I just have a hunch that my boy Sam is gonna hop the magic bus called 'Further!' for the next one...which is when, exactly? I literally can't wait.
Needs a re-read before a proper review or maybe even essay though. Haven't been this excited about social realism since Franzen's The 27th City—and look where that got me, I know, but I just have a hunch that my boy Sam is gonna hop the magic bus called 'Further!' for the next one...which is when, exactly? I literally can't wait.
October 18, 2018
Satire is one of the hardest literary modes to pull off, and Byers succeeds admirably, with a book that is not only au courant and compulsively readable, but frequently LOL funny. NOT being particularly tech savvy (I am such a Luddite, I don't even own a cell phone, let alone a smart one!), I had a bit of difficulty parsing some of the more complicated sections around such, but don't feel like I was missing much. After slogging through some of the Booker noms this year, this came as more than a breath of fresh air.
October 7, 2018
A fantastic, worrying and very funny book set in the post-Brexit near future of the fictitious East Anglian town of Edmundsbury. Social media, traditional media, office work, personal relationships, right-wing politics, big business and morality all figure large in this brilliant satirical novel. Two of the stores I work in are in the Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds, so I was naturally intrigued by what the author might be implying about the area. The setting of the novel could be any middle-England town however, so the real inhabitants need not read too much into it (I think!). The story is quite complex, but the pace of the writing, along with the humour and Sam Byers' obvious love of playing with words, make it a thoroughly enjoyable read. A note on the spot-on jacket to the UK Faber hardback edition with a painting called Babel Britain (after Verhaecht) by Emily Allchurch which is perfect for the contents. Recommended for anyone concerned about the direction we are heading in, and the people who might be guiding us towards a path we don't want to go down.
September 16, 2018
“The opinion-sphere.”
This is a terrifyingly articulate novel that makes one almost too scared to pen a word by way of review, a state-of-the-nation satire that couldn’t be more zeigeisty if it was rolling fake news.
The action is set in small town England, post-Brexit, when “leaving London was the new moving to London”. The internet spews forth venom and vitriol and the only measure of fame that counts is the number of hits/clicks/followers/comments one can generate. But when the interests of a property development company, an enigmatic tech business and a right-wing political party collide, their machinations have a ‘real life’ impact on an ailing local housing estate. The suffering hits home.
As with Sam Byers’ debut ‘Idiopathy’, the first half of this book is terrific. But then the momentum seems to dissipate and the plot gets bogged down. Another issue with Byers is that he eschews physical description of his characters; whether this is because he doesn’t consider appearance of any importance or because today’s identity politics render it a dangerous no-go area I couldn’t say, but it does lead to a lack of clear delineation. Byers wields a fairly big cast list and it would be good to picture them. Otherwise though, this is a hugely enjoyable read.
Oh – and funny. Did I mention that? Perfidious Albion is very, very funny.
This is a terrifyingly articulate novel that makes one almost too scared to pen a word by way of review, a state-of-the-nation satire that couldn’t be more zeigeisty if it was rolling fake news.
The action is set in small town England, post-Brexit, when “leaving London was the new moving to London”. The internet spews forth venom and vitriol and the only measure of fame that counts is the number of hits/clicks/followers/comments one can generate. But when the interests of a property development company, an enigmatic tech business and a right-wing political party collide, their machinations have a ‘real life’ impact on an ailing local housing estate. The suffering hits home.
As with Sam Byers’ debut ‘Idiopathy’, the first half of this book is terrific. But then the momentum seems to dissipate and the plot gets bogged down. Another issue with Byers is that he eschews physical description of his characters; whether this is because he doesn’t consider appearance of any importance or because today’s identity politics render it a dangerous no-go area I couldn’t say, but it does lead to a lack of clear delineation. Byers wields a fairly big cast list and it would be good to picture them. Otherwise though, this is a hugely enjoyable read.
Oh – and funny. Did I mention that? Perfidious Albion is very, very funny.
June 12, 2019
Shortlisted for the 2019 Encore Prize which is awarded to the best second novel of the year.
A satirical romp of a novel about politics, Twitter storms and Brexit. I enjoyed it but probably would have done more so if I were British and knew more about some of the incidents and entities referred to..
A satirical romp of a novel about politics, Twitter storms and Brexit. I enjoyed it but probably would have done more so if I were British and knew more about some of the incidents and entities referred to..
January 4, 2019
A most enjoyable read, though an alarming insight into the machinations and political intrigues that drive our governments. Perfidious Albion is a parody of politics- think tanks, spin doctors, pollsters. The proliferation of media outlets, and the internet medium enables spin, but the start of the concerted manipulation in Britain was the Blair years of Peter Mandelson, of Alistair Campbell.
The Larchwood Estate of the novel is happening today in Hendon North West London (2018) and all over. In Byers novel its the fictional Edmundsbury Council in conjunction with Downton, a developer; in the Thatcher era Westminster City Council, under Dame Porter was not averse to similarly cynical social control via a housing policy.
A London housing estate is the unlikely focal point for a populist politician Hugo Bennington (a rather too obvious take on the erstwhile UK UKIP party leader whose real life persona leaves little to the caricaturist). His personal weakness is a bit convenient as a means to expose his hypocricy.
Robert and Jess, a young couple of opinion influencers, in online media and in traditional newspapers are lying to each other and while they represent the thrusting London metropolis, they also hark back to the young upwardly mobile young of the 1980's (yuppies).
Perfidious Albion is a book which asks necessary questions about our connected world. A world in which "viral" tweets form their own agenda. A world in which cyber cafes (rather grim though their image might be) are necessary refuges in a world in which people operating under pseudonyms need to find necessary cover that might otherwise be compromised working from home, or in an office. The zero hour workforce (Microtaskers here), and flash mobs (the griefers) sound as though they are the product of futuristic fantasy. It all evokes a rather pessimistic outlook, neatly summed up in a great book cover and an appropriate title.
The Larchwood Estate of the novel is happening today in Hendon North West London (2018) and all over. In Byers novel its the fictional Edmundsbury Council in conjunction with Downton, a developer; in the Thatcher era Westminster City Council, under Dame Porter was not averse to similarly cynical social control via a housing policy.
A London housing estate is the unlikely focal point for a populist politician Hugo Bennington (a rather too obvious take on the erstwhile UK UKIP party leader whose real life persona leaves little to the caricaturist). His personal weakness is a bit convenient as a means to expose his hypocricy.
Robert and Jess, a young couple of opinion influencers, in online media and in traditional newspapers are lying to each other and while they represent the thrusting London metropolis, they also hark back to the young upwardly mobile young of the 1980's (yuppies).
Perfidious Albion is a book which asks necessary questions about our connected world. A world in which "viral" tweets form their own agenda. A world in which cyber cafes (rather grim though their image might be) are necessary refuges in a world in which people operating under pseudonyms need to find necessary cover that might otherwise be compromised working from home, or in an office. The zero hour workforce (Microtaskers here), and flash mobs (the griefers) sound as though they are the product of futuristic fantasy. It all evokes a rather pessimistic outlook, neatly summed up in a great book cover and an appropriate title.
October 10, 2018
Perfidious Albion has the most gorgeous cover which, couples with a promising sounding blurb, sold the book to me.
And having read it, I still think the cover is gorgeous.
Sadly, the actual pages were a bit of a letdown. It is now many years since I left perfidious Albion. Since I left, the country has changed: the centre-left government has been replaced by a government of the far right; the Scottish referendum was stolen by lies; the European dream has died and xenophobia reigns supreme. The Little Englanders have won and are destroying all that I knew and valued. I stand by the maxim: nobody likes a Tory. So it is unsurprising that I did not enjoy spending 400 pages in the company of Tories – not even ones being held up for ridicule.
We had the leader of an English separatist movement; we had a far right paramilitary force; we had corporate greeed, we had right wing bloggers and chat-show commentators. They were willing to foment discord, incite racial hatred, trample people and cheat them of their life savings. Yes, I can see the parallels between big business and political movements of the right – trying to trick the majority on false promises in order to further their own narrow interests. And setting this in middle England – Edmundsbury is a not-even-slightly disguised Bury St Edmunds – shows the transfer of power from the intelligentsia and the arts to knuckledraggers in crappy market squares paved in crappy red bricks, surrounded by crappy chain shops like Superdrug and Dorothy Perkins.
God, has it really come to this?
The trouble I had with Perfidious Albion was that I couldn’t tell most of the characters apart; I did not believe in half of them – especially the social commentators and fake bloggers – and the sole voices of social conscience were weak. I did not believe in some of the central ideas including the whole internet privacy thing or “The Field”. I did not believe in the fear and outrage behind the web hijackers.
That’s not to say there weren’t some good set pieces and astute commentary – particularly the exploitation of zero hours contracts. I kinda liked the vacuous dinner party conversations pontificating about the way to save the nation, much as I didn’t particularly believe in the characters engaged in these conversations. But it didn’t quite redeem a novel that was too long, too relentless in its depiction of right-wing thinking, and too naïve in its ridicule of such thinking.
So – an interesting reading experience but one I probably regret.
And having read it, I still think the cover is gorgeous.
Sadly, the actual pages were a bit of a letdown. It is now many years since I left perfidious Albion. Since I left, the country has changed: the centre-left government has been replaced by a government of the far right; the Scottish referendum was stolen by lies; the European dream has died and xenophobia reigns supreme. The Little Englanders have won and are destroying all that I knew and valued. I stand by the maxim: nobody likes a Tory. So it is unsurprising that I did not enjoy spending 400 pages in the company of Tories – not even ones being held up for ridicule.
We had the leader of an English separatist movement; we had a far right paramilitary force; we had corporate greeed, we had right wing bloggers and chat-show commentators. They were willing to foment discord, incite racial hatred, trample people and cheat them of their life savings. Yes, I can see the parallels between big business and political movements of the right – trying to trick the majority on false promises in order to further their own narrow interests. And setting this in middle England – Edmundsbury is a not-even-slightly disguised Bury St Edmunds – shows the transfer of power from the intelligentsia and the arts to knuckledraggers in crappy market squares paved in crappy red bricks, surrounded by crappy chain shops like Superdrug and Dorothy Perkins.
God, has it really come to this?
The trouble I had with Perfidious Albion was that I couldn’t tell most of the characters apart; I did not believe in half of them – especially the social commentators and fake bloggers – and the sole voices of social conscience were weak. I did not believe in some of the central ideas including the whole internet privacy thing or “The Field”. I did not believe in the fear and outrage behind the web hijackers.
That’s not to say there weren’t some good set pieces and astute commentary – particularly the exploitation of zero hours contracts. I kinda liked the vacuous dinner party conversations pontificating about the way to save the nation, much as I didn’t particularly believe in the characters engaged in these conversations. But it didn’t quite redeem a novel that was too long, too relentless in its depiction of right-wing thinking, and too naïve in its ridicule of such thinking.
So – an interesting reading experience but one I probably regret.
September 18, 2018
This really ought to be called "The Zeitgeist Tape". Its target audience would recognise and love the reference. It seems to fill the same comfort food role for them as "Authentocrats" does for Corbynites, and both books have that already-dated air of representing a world that is passing away before they even reached the shops.
There are a few amusing moments in here, though not good enough for an episode of "Peep Show". Corporate management culture and "blue sky thinking" waffle-merchants are quite stale satirical targets, they've been taking a pasting at least since Douglas Adams invented Sirius Cybernetics and "Share & Enjoy" nearly 40 years ago, so tell us something new. The parodies of Farage and Jordan Peterson and other ephemeral figures are competent but trite. There is a bit of a "women are stronger than men" message coming through, teetering on the edge of patronising Male Feminist territory. The end section is far too discursive and I honestly couldn't care enough to figure out if there was a twist ending about it all being a simulation.
John Harris likes it. As people like to say on Twitter a lot these days: let that sink in.
There are a few amusing moments in here, though not good enough for an episode of "Peep Show". Corporate management culture and "blue sky thinking" waffle-merchants are quite stale satirical targets, they've been taking a pasting at least since Douglas Adams invented Sirius Cybernetics and "Share & Enjoy" nearly 40 years ago, so tell us something new. The parodies of Farage and Jordan Peterson and other ephemeral figures are competent but trite. There is a bit of a "women are stronger than men" message coming through, teetering on the edge of patronising Male Feminist territory. The end section is far too discursive and I honestly couldn't care enough to figure out if there was a twist ending about it all being a simulation.
John Harris likes it. As people like to say on Twitter a lot these days: let that sink in.
March 25, 2019
Deep sigh. I gave this novel over two hundred pages of my attention before I thought, "Life's too short". I like dystopian science fiction, and this started as a pithy dissection of the way our lives are heading in a technocratic age. But, in order to drive a story where the setting is as imaginary as the characters, then the characters need to be strong and likeable. And I didn't like any of them. It seemed clear to me that the author spends a lot of time hanging around with smart, chic, young media types, as he pins these people in a believable way. But his portrayal of an older, "working class" bloke seemed lazy and shallow. The author may as well have had him spouting "I voted Brexit" every other line just in case you missed the point. But, given I never finished the book, I may be wrong and it wouldn't surprise me if it was the old bloke who ends up smelling of honesty and integrity while the other characters are exposed for the lying, conniving, untrustworthy, perverted and craven people that they mostly seem to be. With this inability to relate to any of the cast, I gave it up. Shame.
March 21, 2019
Brexit meets Black Mirror
January 10, 2020
Cringeworthy, scathing and frankly terrifying political and technological satire populated with tech giants, populist politicians, paid-for commentators who do not even know whose agenda they are advancing, misogynists, social media haters, nationalist thugs and disruptors. A Black Mirror image of the world right now, not just in the UK but everywhere in the Western world. Scary revelations about what sort of hatred can be spewed out by the twittersphere, how a tweet sent in jest can cause a media storm, but also amusing depiction of the working arrangements at a tech company, the faux intellectualism of cultural influencers, click-bait analysis by media wannabes and much more. I thoroughly recommend.
November 3, 2018
4.5 rounded up
As if real life wasn't miserable enough, Sam Byer's sophomore offering provides us with a bleak (but often darkly humourous) look at post-Brexit Britain, and all of the joys that encapsulate it - slimy Nigel Farage-esque politicians, misogyny, online abuse and the increasing power and ruthlessness of the state. A gripping satire which really captures the zeitgeist of the era. Highly recommended!
As if real life wasn't miserable enough, Sam Byer's sophomore offering provides us with a bleak (but often darkly humourous) look at post-Brexit Britain, and all of the joys that encapsulate it - slimy Nigel Farage-esque politicians, misogyny, online abuse and the increasing power and ruthlessness of the state. A gripping satire which really captures the zeitgeist of the era. Highly recommended!
August 30, 2018
A breakneck tumble down the rabbit hole of political tribalism, digital-identity and the shift from State to Corporate ownership. Terrifying and absurdly funny in equal measure, Byers' second novel does what all good satire should: takes our present reality, gives it a nudge and then sits back to watch everything snowball. This book has fangs.
September 7, 2018
So up to the minute, post-Brexit, dick pic, online trolling, far right, pc gone mad, feminazi, sinister corporation, that I fear it will not age well, but read now it's a slice of blistering zeitgeisty satire on Little England.
April 28, 2019
I really enjoyed this book. If you've worked in IT, novels in which it features tend to leave you grinding your teeth at the author's ignorance. This is not one of those books. It involves a really smart analysis of the effects of modern social media and AI, mostly played out through the dysfunctional relationship between Robert and Jess around which the novel revolves.
Don't believe the reviews that say this is a "Brexit novel". It isn't. In the novel, Brexit has happened, and rancid English nationalism is still on the rise. But Byers uses the story as a hook for thought-provoking analysis of how social media and virtual worlds encourage polarisation and excess. I found Jess's ruminations on her virtual personalities really illuminating. You could argue that the characters here are just pegs for the author's ideas. But even if that's the case, the ideas are interesting enough to keep you involved. And Robert's progression from right-on lefty to columnist for the novel's equivalent of the Daily Mail, driven by white male anger, was thoroughly convincing (to me anyway). And the elevation of opinion as more important than fact is very now. Robert sinks deeper into self-delusion the moment he finds himself the centre of attention.
And further on:
Smart stuff. It's rather like the novel I was hoping Jonathan Coe would write, but didn't. Less funny probably, but with that black humour and over-the-top drama that's his trademark. I might have given it five stars, but I was slightly disappointed by the ending, which felt too unreal.
Finally, a small point: I really enjoyed Byers' awareness of body language. For example when Jess and Robert are rowing about the relative levels of online harassment they have experienced (Jess: rape and death threats, Robert: derision).
Don't believe the reviews that say this is a "Brexit novel". It isn't. In the novel, Brexit has happened, and rancid English nationalism is still on the rise. But Byers uses the story as a hook for thought-provoking analysis of how social media and virtual worlds encourage polarisation and excess. I found Jess's ruminations on her virtual personalities really illuminating. You could argue that the characters here are just pegs for the author's ideas. But even if that's the case, the ideas are interesting enough to keep you involved. And Robert's progression from right-on lefty to columnist for the novel's equivalent of the Daily Mail, driven by white male anger, was thoroughly convincing (to me anyway). And the elevation of opinion as more important than fact is very now. Robert sinks deeper into self-delusion the moment he finds himself the centre of attention.
...he began to wonder whether he had ever experienced a genuine sense of power. His whole life, it seemed to him now, had been a kind of deflated capitulation.[...] For so long, he'd written about others from a distance, and tailored what he wrote to the imagined tastes of still more distanced others. This, now, was about him. The power of autobiography, so much in vogue, and so infuriatingly out of reach to a man like Robert, was now available to him. Even as he squirmed at the exposure, he thrilled at the potential.
And further on:
He'd begun by reporting what was happening. He'd graduated from a focus on what was happening to a focus on what he thought about what was happening. From there, what was happening had come to have less and less bearing on what he thought, until all that mattered, to borrow a choice phrase from Lionel Groves, was that he thought at all. Now what he thought was what was happening.
Smart stuff. It's rather like the novel I was hoping Jonathan Coe would write, but didn't. Less funny probably, but with that black humour and over-the-top drama that's his trademark. I might have given it five stars, but I was slightly disappointed by the ending, which felt too unreal.
Finally, a small point: I really enjoyed Byers' awareness of body language. For example when Jess and Robert are rowing about the relative levels of online harassment they have experienced (Jess: rape and death threats, Robert: derision).
He sat back in his chair, evidently trying to calm himself down, but doing so in a way that drew attention to his efforts, as if, she thought, she was supposed to respect the fact that he was trying to calm himself down; as if, in calming himself down, he was making some kind of statement about the ways in which she was not calming herself down.
October 2, 2018
Perfidious Albion is very much a story of our times, for all that it's set in a future post-Brexit era.
Byers touches on all the current hot-button topics: racism and equality; Internet privacy, doxing, and rape threats; unsolicited dick pics; feminism, misogyny, and the fragile white male; efficiency, microtasking, and freelance culture. Within just Robert & Jess's relationship, Byers lays bare the stark differences in approach and understanding of similar events between a male and a female of similar standing and class (attacks on males are professional, attacks on females are personal). With Trina and Darkins, you see a vast difference in how the world treats a black female and a white male. Innocuous words are twisted into sinister intent for political gain.
There's no specific place to this, for all that it's set in Edmunsbury, a small town in eastern England. The events both seem local and global, a microcosm that holds true for the world. Everything is out there on the internet--Jess wars against Robert's online persona through a fake person of her own whilst maintaining cordial relationship at home; Robert changes his tone and beliefs (while pretending he's holding true to his principles) according to what his editor wants and what they think the readers want; Trina's life rapidly spirals just because of one ill-advised tweet latched onto by Bennington and opined on by Robert. A shady group of masked men disrupt events by asking "What don't you want to share?"
A lot, it seems.
Everyone has things to hide. And it's mob justice, beginning with social justice warriors on the net, that seems to prevail.
The Internet is a place on its own--a world that lives and breathes by its own rules, where nothing ever seems to die, or can be revived at will with just the right (or wrong) word, just one misstep.
Perfidious Albion feels like a cautionary word to readers: be careful of what you do and say online. Anything can be twisted if the situation is ripe.
Byers touches on all the current hot-button topics: racism and equality; Internet privacy, doxing, and rape threats; unsolicited dick pics; feminism, misogyny, and the fragile white male; efficiency, microtasking, and freelance culture. Within just Robert & Jess's relationship, Byers lays bare the stark differences in approach and understanding of similar events between a male and a female of similar standing and class (attacks on males are professional, attacks on females are personal). With Trina and Darkins, you see a vast difference in how the world treats a black female and a white male. Innocuous words are twisted into sinister intent for political gain.
There's no specific place to this, for all that it's set in Edmunsbury, a small town in eastern England. The events both seem local and global, a microcosm that holds true for the world. Everything is out there on the internet--Jess wars against Robert's online persona through a fake person of her own whilst maintaining cordial relationship at home; Robert changes his tone and beliefs (while pretending he's holding true to his principles) according to what his editor wants and what they think the readers want; Trina's life rapidly spirals just because of one ill-advised tweet latched onto by Bennington and opined on by Robert. A shady group of masked men disrupt events by asking "What don't you want to share?"
A lot, it seems.
Everyone has things to hide. And it's mob justice, beginning with social justice warriors on the net, that seems to prevail.
The Internet is a place on its own--a world that lives and breathes by its own rules, where nothing ever seems to die, or can be revived at will with just the right (or wrong) word, just one misstep.
Perfidious Albion feels like a cautionary word to readers: be careful of what you do and say online. Anything can be twisted if the situation is ripe.
October 19, 2019
This darkly satirical take on a post-Brexit Britain is about as zeitgeisty as it is possible to be. Though largely political in its skewering of the current malaise in the UK, Byers also casts his deeply funny, troublingly perceptive gaze towards the media and the internet and the shared space that these entities occupy in 21st century, tech-dominated contemporary society.
There are moments here that are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny- though much of the humour seems indebted to or at least reminiscent of Armando Iannuci’s The Thick of It. There are other moments where the satire is laid on a little too heavily, with sections of prose being glaringly self-aware and contrived. That is not to say however that the novel is ever anything less than plausible: there is a Black Mirror-esque reflection of British society offered here and it is deeply disturbing. One only has to look at Nigel Farage’s popularity and the rise of fascist movements and rhetoric in the UK to see how on-the-nose Byers is here. Overall, this was a really enjoyable read and I recommend to anyone with an interest in our current political climate.
There are moments here that are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny- though much of the humour seems indebted to or at least reminiscent of Armando Iannuci’s The Thick of It. There are other moments where the satire is laid on a little too heavily, with sections of prose being glaringly self-aware and contrived. That is not to say however that the novel is ever anything less than plausible: there is a Black Mirror-esque reflection of British society offered here and it is deeply disturbing. One only has to look at Nigel Farage’s popularity and the rise of fascist movements and rhetoric in the UK to see how on-the-nose Byers is here. Overall, this was a really enjoyable read and I recommend to anyone with an interest in our current political climate.
June 15, 2019
I have mixed feelings about this. I admire Sam Byers’ attempt to satirise the current state of the nation through this glimpse into a post-Brexit near future but the problem is that it’s increasingly hard to satirise a world in which the present Brexit fiasco goes on and on, Trump is President of the USA and Boris Johnson is about to become Prime Minister. It reminds me of the early 70s when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after ordering the bombing of Cambodia which prompted Tom Lehrer, the satirical songwriter, to announce his retirement because ‘satire is dead ‘.
I also have real difficulty with novels that attempt to do battle with the growing power of tech companies and social media. In this novel, I got lost in the complexities of who was controlling who, how and why.
However, there was some funny dialogue to enjoy and the more obvious satirical target of the right wing party, England Always and its Nigel Farage/Boris Johnson like leader, Hugo Bennington. If only somebody could discover some ‘dick pics’ that Boris Johnson had posted to women.
I also have real difficulty with novels that attempt to do battle with the growing power of tech companies and social media. In this novel, I got lost in the complexities of who was controlling who, how and why.
However, there was some funny dialogue to enjoy and the more obvious satirical target of the right wing party, England Always and its Nigel Farage/Boris Johnson like leader, Hugo Bennington. If only somebody could discover some ‘dick pics’ that Boris Johnson had posted to women.
January 16, 2019
Dystopian. Quite scary. Is this where we’re heading? Consider data collection, the internet, twitter feeds, instant media... and privacy considerations. Glad to have read it, liked the characters, or most of them, enjoyed the dialogue, found it well written and thought provoking. But taking it down to a 3 star for two main reasons. I did not like the miniature picture displays, found that an unnecessary part of the story - a step too far even for a satire. And I thought the ending - what little I understood of it - confusing and disappointing.
January 21, 2019
Perfidious Albion is a very clever satire on contemporary (and I mean contemporary - this is bang up to date) Britain. Coming across like an episode of Black Mirror written by Jonathan Coe or a J.G. Ballard comedy about Facebook, this juggles online trolling, the gamification of society, precarious housing, populist politics of race and paranoia about large tech companies use of personal data. It’s scabrously funny in parts but also deeply thought provoking. Probably one to read quickly as it’s so “of the now” that it’s likely to date terribly, but highly recommended.
August 25, 2018
There's a very high possibility I will bump this up to five, but for now, as i am ill, and could do with reading the final twenty pages again, not now, when I am ill, but later, when I am not ill, I'll let it simmer on the four.
Furiously contemporary. Ridiculously funny. Every layer functions effortlessly, flawlessly.
Get in, son.
4.374
Furiously contemporary. Ridiculously funny. Every layer functions effortlessly, flawlessly.
Get in, son.
4.374
July 9, 2019
Satire is hard. It's difficult to care about people that are meant to represent more than themselves, but Byers does an admirable job. It's only the last 30 pages that I think he gets a little too clever, like he earned his soapbox, but the rest of the conversation-dressed-up-as-plot is so considered and on point that I'm happy to forgive the final lapse.
3.75, rounded to 4
3.75, rounded to 4
January 12, 2019
A good book about the online and getting red-pilled. A little bit too up its own ass at times. Even as a satire, the characters were a little flat, and there was far too many sections about biking. On the other hand, it features the only writing about Twitter I’ve read that doesn’t make me want to tear my eyes out.
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