What even is this? It’s a daring, uncompromising, bonkers serious-scape of the kind that rarely gets the limelight in the UK’s contemporary literary field. Why? Because it’s subversive, off the wall and, frankly, challenging to the status quo of what literature is and does. For all these reasons, I’m glad of it.
Corey Fah is a writer who’s been awarded a prize for “the fictionalisation of social evils”, but the prize turns out to be a strange, UFO-like trophy that Fah repeatedly tries and fails to collect. Bambi Pavok, a time-travelling deer with eight legs and a spider’s “drinking-straw mouthpart”, appears on the scene. A madcap adventure unfolds in which Fah befriends Pavok (sort of) and with Drew – Corey’s partner – they become embroiled in a reality TV show about wormholes, hosted by Sean Saint Orton (an unrecognised writer whose story makes reference to the life of English playwright Joe Orton). The finale takes place in a football stadium/pop-up TV studio, where the characters travel in a time loop, trying to work out how to stop the mayhem. By the end of the novel, social mobility as we know it – awards, celebrity and “success” – has been roundly debunked.
