84K

Claire North

Orbit Books

Otago Daily Times, August 20th 2018

Claire North (the sci-fi nom-de-plume of 22 year-old wunderkind Catherine Webb) specialises in disturbing tales whose complex plots explore questions of identity, causality and moral responsibility. Her latest novel shares these thematic concerns but where the central characters of earlier books – who can assume the body of those they touch, or are instantly forgotten as soon as you look away – represent ‘others’ who hide among us, 84K forces us to contemplate a society in which everybody chooses not to see the horror in their midst.

The story is set in a Britain where Governmental outsourcing has reached its logical conclusion and a corporate entity known simply as the Company controls every aspect of life. Those with money can (literally) get away with murder while those without are beholden to the businesses that sponsor their access to everything from education to justice, or are abandoned to live or die alone, screaming their rage into the night.

The story’s ‘hero’, a man known as Theo Miller, is a financial assessor in the Criminal Audit Office. Here he spends his days determining the price of crime  – £48,912 for manslaughter, reduced by £4500 because the victim was an alien – and sending those who cannot pay to the prison factories for ‘rehabilitation through work’. But Theo is not who he claims to be, so when his childhood friend, Dani, appears in his assumed life asking him to find a child she claims is their daughter he refuses, fearing exposure. Then Dani is executed by a Company contractor, and Theo is appointed to investigate determine the price of her life (the 84K of the title).

When he uncovers evidence for corporate murder on a massive scale he is horrified, but what is worse is the realisation that this is a secret that everybody knows. Determined to make a better world for his daughter, Theo sets out to bring the Company down, but his actions have consequences that may be worse than those what he is attempting to prevent.

I have loved North’s previous novels and wish I could say the same of 84K, but she has done her job so well that I struggled to make it through. The writing, which walks an uneasy line between an associative stream-of consciousness and a more conventional, third-person narrative that perfectly captures the dislocated nature of the novelistic world, and the parallels between fascist and capitalist totalitarianism are starkly obvious.

Her focus on Theo’s story leaves several other equally fascinating characters frustratingly opaque, and although their actions remind us that kindness remains a powerful force even in a society ruled by indifference, it is not at all clear that their sacrifice will change anything.
The eventual outcome is as much an act of fate as of conscience and in a world saturated in dystopian visions, I am desperate for something more hopeful.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/dystopian-vision-leaves-desire-more-hope