The Delusions by Jenni Fagan review: 'always interesting'
Although it can feel hectoring and repetitive at times, Jenni Fagan’s new afterlife-set novel is full of ideas and funny to boot, writes Stuart Kelly
Towards the end The Delusions, Jenni Fagan’s fifth novel, our narrator Edi starts to read Dante. It’s a knowing nod. Even though there have been afterlife visions from everyone from Homer and Virgil to Philip Pullman and Alice Sebold, Dante is still central. As an aside, my favourite post-death-set work is Robert Shearman’s short story, 72 Virgins, in which Islam proves right and the narrator gets his 72 virgins. Not all are female, young, beautiful, or even human. But when he does fall in love with one, conjugal relations mean she is no longer a virgin and therefore disappears. It seems to me categorical that “katabasis” works, to use the technical term for the descent into the underworld, require two things: a vividly imagined setting and a set of possibly breakable rules. It also helps if there is a clear moral function to the fiction. Fagan’s work scores highly on two, and is perhaps a bit shoogly on the other.
Edi, a single mother has died young, from cancer. An opening note states she had “43 earth years, 47 Afterlife years, works in ADMIN – success rate in PROCESSING needs improvement, inter-personal skills questionable. Any signs of disregard for PROTOCOL must be closely observed”. Batshiva has been in this ADMIN team longest yet had the shortest time on earth and Eustace is the oldest in mortal terms but the newbieon the team. Readers with some knowledge of Fagan’s work will see some parallels. Edi has the same complicated relationship with authority as Anais had in Fagan’s debut, The Panopticon. The Sunlight Pilgrims had survivalist single mother Constance in a harsh environment. The spirit-world medium Agnes was plagued by undeparting ghosts in Luckenbooth, Fagan’s most ambitious novel, which also dealt with her frequent themes: orphanhood, male sexual violence, and an askew eye on reality.
The point of ADMIN is to interview (or interrogate) the newly deceased. ADMIN are watched over by HR, who monitor a leaderboard of how many have been seen and by whom. There are Engineers who might be engineered themselves and the H in HR is probably not Human. There are sinister Floor Roamers to police the Queues. We don’t meet any more figures from ADMIN other than the beleaguered trio mentioned above, but the novel throws out so many ideas and images this was a wise decision.
The purpose of ADMIN is twofold. They first must help purge the new arrivals of “Delusion”. This is viscerally described as the arrival having to extract an eel-like, thrashing, oily thing with sharp teeth. Then they are interrogated by ADMIN – the usual first question being “Were you a good person?” Needless to say, ADMIN has all the answers and most of the arrivals lie. It is then a kind of psychological breaking down of the arrival to determine their final destination. Some “pass” – but not even ADMIN know into what. Some are simply tasered away. There is mention of the Theatre of Cruelty where some will be part of the endless Performance of Cruelty. There is the floor of Trapped Souls and the Glasshouse of Lost Souls. We also get after work scenes where Edi, Batshiva and Eustace – now incorporeal of course – lounge in bars made up of planetoids and suck on beams of light. The scenes of them observing the beauty of the universe has a soupçon of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, but while there it was very grounded, albeit in space, here it is more oneiric and fantastical.
The novel has two engines to drive it. One story is about escalation. The numbers on the board keep going up and at first Edi, Batshiva and Eustace speculate about natural disasters, wars and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to: but something else might be up. The question is, to quote the EM Forster story, what happens When The Machine Stops? The other impulse is Edi’s desire to either find her son, who was barely in primary school when she died, or at least find out if he passed. Obviously there are bureaucratic impediments to this.
All this is well and good indeed, but I have a few caveats and cavils. I do not doubt the sincerity nor the idealism of Fagan’s political positions – many I share – but the tone can become hectoring and repetitive. I can only take so much of “the capitalist glow of humanity holds its hand out stating you dead ones aren’t done yet, you must still hand over all your worldly goods and pay your final tax bill… or they will go after your f***ing family and one by one take them out you mother-f***ing scumbags”. Various topics – misogyny, bureaucracy, racism, environmental damage, the collapse of international agreements, the disappearance of decency - they’re relentless here. Maybe that is as it should be, but you never pour the whole bottle of cochineal in the cake. The swearing is unrelenting as well, but consider: “Quite a little power buzz this little prick is building up for himself! Withholding my morning shot of energy! Rotten little spunk bucket! What an absolute f***-up!” (Edi actually praises herself for “just pulling together acrobatic combinations of blasphemes and desecrations and profanity in ever more inventive constellations…!”
Finally: I have never read a novel with so many exclamation marks. There’s a good game where you add an exclamation mark to a famous line and see what happens (To be or not to be! April is the cruellest month!) It is obviously a choice, but one that I found grating.
If you can set these issues aside, read the book. Fagan is always interesting, parts here are funny and the end is rather sweetly sentimental.
The Delusions, by Jenni Fagan, Hutchinson Heinemann, £18.99
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