This is a very appealing novel by a most original
writer. The Paper Eater is a satire on the world of retail. Although
the setting is futuristic, many readers will already recognise the Libertycare
Corporation, the Big Retail machine that will do literally anything for
its customers, including the disposal of your body...
Harvey Kidd owns a family
business. Trouble is, his family doesn't really exist. Still, their
fraudulent practices keep Harvey happy and solvent. With the advent of
online trading, the Hogg family business grows and expands. Since
everything is done automatically, nobody checks to see just how many offshore
accounts the Hoggs have. Harvey still has other needs however, and falls
in lust and gets married to Gwynneth. Everything goes swimmingly at
first, until Harvey has to admit that he's an orphan, his family isn't actually
genuine, and that he's a fraudster. Gwynneth seems to accept all this,
apart from Harvey's unnatural urges regarding his imaginary mother and his
voluptuous teenage sister, Lola (as in Lolita?). To Harvey's delight,
however, Gwynneth becomes pregnant. Maybe a real daughter will be enough
to release him from his Hogg fantasy? But Gwynneth decides to take
revenge, a decision that will have repercussions for the Kidds for years to
come. Harvey is thrust once more into the welcoming arms of the Hoggs,
embroiled in his imaginary family made up from composite photos, divided
from the concrete world. Still, Harvey lives on the porous isle of
Atlantica, the very ground is designed to soak up all the pollution of the
world - not even nuclear waste is turned away from Atlantica's ports.
Years later, Harvey is now a prisoner on the Sea
Hero, destined to return to Atlantica in time for Liberty Day. It's
an appointment that fills him with foreboding. Never the most open of
people, Harvey has to find something that will keep his mouth shut, in fear
that the other prisoners would lynch him, should they discover his
secret. Instead, he indulges in the art of papier mache, recycling pulp
newspaper into art. But his bunk mate is condemned to death, and so has
special dispensation to ask Harvey probing questions. Harvey is forced to
relate the whole sorrowful tale, to speak of his lost love, the socially
inhibited Hannah Park, and of a conspiracy at the very heart of Libertycare...
The Paper Eater is an excellent retail satire,
with a killing portrait of how 'customer care' and aromatherapy might go
too far. There did seem to be one factual error though: Wesley Pike says
that the game of Snakes and Ladders originated from China, whereas all the
sources I found say it derived from India. Papier mache certainly seems
to have been exported from China though, where paper was first
manufactured. Liz Jensen is a brilliant, original writer, with very much
her own quite readable style. The satire is hard, fast, and witty.
The Paper Eater is a novel about how retail technology can dehumanise you, by
presenting consumer choice as liberty, and docility as happiness. How is
it then, that both Harvey and Hannah find the need to strive for freedom
against Liberty? Is the death of politics and automatic justice
necessarily a good thing? Like George Orwell's 1984 (except for the
rats), Liz Jensen extrapolates the present to the not too distant future, and
provides a consuming critique of consumerism at its most hungry.
Authortrek rating: 9/10
Kevin Patrick Mahoney
Visit our Liz Jensen page
Snakes
and Ladders Online Guide - the game seems to have been derived from
India, and not China as Wesley Pike states in the novel
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