To those readers who know Helen Macdonald from their exact and wonderful writing about the natural world, including the bestselling memoir of grief H Is for Hawk, this book, a trippy, philosophical science-fiction novel with the pacing of a thriller and the pulse of a romance, is an unusual departure. Macdonald – who, like their co-author and friend Sin Blaché, uses the pronoun they – has described in recent interviews how the book was born of the frustrations of lockdown, when the pair of them filled some of the downtime with internet chats about a shared interest in science-fiction and the TV and video games of their childhood. Those conversations not only prompted the writing of this novel but also its plotline.
Prophet begins deep in the Suffolk countryside, where, near a Nato airbase, an American diner, complete with jukebox and chrome fittings, has appeared overnight fully formed in a field. It glows neon in the twilight but there is no source for its power, no plumbing for its water. On the base itself other objects have been appearing, without obvious histories: a bunch of roses, a cabbage patch doll, a Scrabble box, a kid’s bike, a Pac-Man arcade game. These appearances have coincided with the death of an airman at the base, incinerated in a bonfire of his own making.
