In the Absence of Heroes

Anthony McCarten

Vintage

Otago Daily Times, 2012

Even those of us who grew up in the pre-Google world have trouble remembering life without the internet. Although it has changed many things for the better, there is also a dark side to our wired society. Anthony McCarten explores one such negative consequence, the way digital relationships can supersede those in the real world, in his latest novel, In The Absence of Heroes ).

Set a year after the death of their youngest child, Donald, (whose final months are described in Death of a Superhero), Jim and Renata Delpe are struggling to rebuild their lives. Determined to return leave the past behind, Jim has bought a new house in the country in the hope that the family can reconnect once they escape the pressure-cooker of London, but Renata is not yet ready to move on. As her emotional and physical isolation from her husband increases, she finds the support and affirmation she craves by way of an internet confessional whose anonymous priest she refers to in her own thoughts as ‘God’.

Meanwhile their eldest son Jeff has immersed himself in an on-line game called Life of Lore, in which players take the part of heroes of myth and legend in a series of adventures that test both fighting ability and moral reasoning. When he suddenly disappears, tired of being the glue holding his parents fragmenting marriage together, Jim follows him into this digital world and soon finds himself obsessed with both cyber-stalking his son and the game itself, discovering in the process things about them both that he would rather not know.

McCarten’s skill as a writer is particularly evident in the way he captures the nuances of grief: from the poignant symbolism of the beach-ball containing Donald’s breath Renata discovers in the basement to the text messages that Jeff continues to send his brother moths after his passing.

He also highlights the dangers inherent in the on-line world while also acknowledging its benefits. Renata may have substituted an on-line confessor for her husband in an emotional sense, but his support allows her to make decisions that she would have been unable to make alone. And the final hope of reconciliation comes (albeit unintentionally) when a character reaches out from the virtual to the real world.

Unfortunately, the ultimate fulcrum on which the story turns is the on-line game he has created, and it is here I felt that the novel falters. The idea behind Life of Lore is an attractive one; battles are won as much by bravery and self-sacrifice as by physical skill, and its behind-the-scenes world becomes a place where players can experiment in virtual lifestyles with possibilities they feel unable to test in the real world.

I couldn’t help feeling it lacks the complexity that makes MMPORGs so addictive. Part of this reflects the difficulty in depicting game-play in words; Jim’s early encounters with the world reminded me more of the old-style text-based adventures than today’s visually immersive on-line worlds and is not helped by the occasionally sloppy mistake (most obviously when a quest Jim embarks on in at the second level is later described as a third-level challenge).

The biggest problem is that it has only 6 levels, after which avatars acquire a quasi-godhood and can shape the word to suit their own ends. Very satisfying I’m sure, but not, I suspect, the hook that keeps users returning to WoW day after day. This is world created for the novel not the game, and much as I enjoyed The Absence of Heroes, it ultimately rang a little hollow.