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A review by mullane45
The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison
2.0
2.5 rounded down.
M John Harrison is someone whose work I always find interesting, and I certainly respect him as a writer, and as much as I appreciated some of this one, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. Although despite that – despite myself, almost - something tells me I may end up thinking about it often in the months and years to come.
Shaw is an unhappy man trying to drag himself out of a personal crisis but is incapable of realising how emotionally vacant he is, let alone being able to address it. Victoria is a chirpier and more confident woman, who moves into her deceased mother’s house for a fresh start in a rural town, but remains is in denial about what a big ball of anxiety she is and the fact that there’s precisely nothing ‘fresh’ about her escape. Occasionally the two come together in a fragmentary almost-relationship, but they remain hollow and lost. Meanwhile, all around them yet always out of grasp, something strange is happening to the country; hazy conspiracy theories abound and there are rumours of strange and embryonic aquatic creatures surfacing...
The latter element is a fortean blur that only really exists on the novel’s fringes. Instead, the focus is on two unhappy people living in an unhappy country, and on painting a watery atmosphere that seems to reflect Harrison’s muddled, indistinct, and disenfranchised view of Brexit Britain. You feel that the allegory is certainly there, but it’s difficult to find; the plot almost impossible.
For all its triumphs of illusory disillusionment and painting an unsettling atmosphere that manages to be both foggy and crystalline, there really isn’t much story here, and it’s difficult to pick out any moment that truly mattered. Momentous or strange events whiz past in a matter-of-fact way, barely – if ever – to be referenced again. Every time you think “ah, this will propel things forward!” you're mistaken. It’s not a long novel, but it grows repetitive, and much of the dialogue is deliberately opaque (as it often is in Harrison’s work), as each person seems to converse exclusively in non-sequiturs; each party seemingly replying to one half of a completely different conversation.
And yet, perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps the plot, simultaneously muddled and barely there, and the self-deludedly miserable characters, the lack of any anchor to cling on to, and the depiction of a world that’s at once recognisable while feeling bafflingly alien is all meant to help convey the stultifying, stupefying effect of living in this hellhole country; to be swept up in the confusion of a land that has all but eaten its own identity and still hungers for more. With Harrison you’re never quite sure. Either way, I’m certainly not sorry I read it, despite the unfavourable rating above.
M John Harrison is someone whose work I always find interesting, and I certainly respect him as a writer, and as much as I appreciated some of this one, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. Although despite that – despite myself, almost - something tells me I may end up thinking about it often in the months and years to come.
Shaw is an unhappy man trying to drag himself out of a personal crisis but is incapable of realising how emotionally vacant he is, let alone being able to address it. Victoria is a chirpier and more confident woman, who moves into her deceased mother’s house for a fresh start in a rural town, but remains is in denial about what a big ball of anxiety she is and the fact that there’s precisely nothing ‘fresh’ about her escape. Occasionally the two come together in a fragmentary almost-relationship, but they remain hollow and lost. Meanwhile, all around them yet always out of grasp, something strange is happening to the country; hazy conspiracy theories abound and there are rumours of strange and embryonic aquatic creatures surfacing...
The latter element is a fortean blur that only really exists on the novel’s fringes. Instead, the focus is on two unhappy people living in an unhappy country, and on painting a watery atmosphere that seems to reflect Harrison’s muddled, indistinct, and disenfranchised view of Brexit Britain. You feel that the allegory is certainly there, but it’s difficult to find; the plot almost impossible.
For all its triumphs of illusory disillusionment and painting an unsettling atmosphere that manages to be both foggy and crystalline, there really isn’t much story here, and it’s difficult to pick out any moment that truly mattered. Momentous or strange events whiz past in a matter-of-fact way, barely – if ever – to be referenced again. Every time you think “ah, this will propel things forward!” you're mistaken. It’s not a long novel, but it grows repetitive, and much of the dialogue is deliberately opaque (as it often is in Harrison’s work), as each person seems to converse exclusively in non-sequiturs; each party seemingly replying to one half of a completely different conversation.
And yet, perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps the plot, simultaneously muddled and barely there, and the self-deludedly miserable characters, the lack of any anchor to cling on to, and the depiction of a world that’s at once recognisable while feeling bafflingly alien is all meant to help convey the stultifying, stupefying effect of living in this hellhole country; to be swept up in the confusion of a land that has all but eaten its own identity and still hungers for more. With Harrison you’re never quite sure. Either way, I’m certainly not sorry I read it, despite the unfavourable rating above.