In the author’s note at the end of Orpheus Nine, Chris Flynn’s fourth novel, he writes that its opening scene came to him in a dream – and there is certainly much of the nightmarish about the book’s central conceit. Orpheus Nine opens at an under-10s football match in the small Australian town of Gattan, with parents barracking and bickering on the sidelines. Suddenly all the players stop moving and begin to sing – in Latin, no less – before collapsing and dying. All bar one, that is – Alex van der Saar, the son of the local squattocracy, is entirely unharmed. Just a week ago he turned 10.
The tragedy turns out to be part of a global phenomenon, with the same affliction befalling every nine-year-old on the planet simultaneously. In the days and weeks that follow, the same fate fells every child on their ninth birthday – and this phenomenon (“It wasn’t a virus, it wasn’t a fungal infection, it wasn’t a biological terrorist attack,” one character explains) quickly becomes known as “Orpheus Nine”.
