Brace yourself: the trickle of pandemic novels, Covid memoirs and lockdown nature writing is about to become a flood. Art produced from and about the last few years will prove crucial to our collective understanding of ourselves; however, the desire to move on is understandable, too.
One of the more interesting ways to process events is to alter or reimagine them, and this is Claire Fuller’s approach in her fifth novel, The Memory of Animals. Set largely in London, in a dystopian near future, it’s a huge tonal shift after the rural noir of her Costa Novel award-winning Unsettled Ground.
An infectious disease initially dubbed dropsy for its fluid-retaining effects has swept the planet after first being identified in South America. In the capital, young, healthy volunteers have been sought for a three-week trial during which some will be given an experimental vaccine followed by the virus itself. As Neffy – short for Nefeli – arrives, news breaks of a more deadly mutation. Neffy, a marine biologist who grew up between England and Greece, where her father lives, is in it for the money, and it’s clear she’s leaving behind some kind of tragedy or scandal. What precisely has happened unfolds in flashbacks and a series of letters to “H” written in her notebook.
Of the 16 volunteers at the double-blind vaccine trial, each isolated in separate rooms, Neffy turns out to be one of those selected for a dose of the virus, and spends a week close to death. When she emerges it is into a world that has been completely transformed. There are no staff left at Vaccine BioPharm and only four of the other volunteers remain: Leon, Yahiko, Rachel and Piper. The streets of London are empty except for bodies, crashed cars and a few extremely ill survivors; all television channels are unstaffed or off air. So far, so 28 Days Later – with the unsettling new resonance that comes from the fact that we have all just had a close brush with the outcome Fuller describes.
With the world outside unsafe, and only Neffy thought to be immune, the five volunteers form an uneasy agreement to stay put in case some kind of help is organised for them at the end of the trial. Fragile alliances form then shatter, and trust is in short supply. Fuller skilfully evokes the boredom and claustrophobia of days spent with strangers in a featureless, clinical building. But their supplies won’t last until the trial end date, and pressure builds on Neffy to brave the outside world; at the same time, she has a growing sense that the others have a plan they haven’t shared with her.
Neffy’s disjointed, gnomic notes to “H” reveal glimpses of her previous work with octopuses at an aquarium, and the parallels between these trapped intelligent creatures and the lab-rat volunteers are perhaps a little too pat. Moreover, it’s not clear when she has written or is writing these entries – they don’t seem to connect to the rest of the book. But the other device used to reveal her backstory is even more cumbrous: Leon has brought with him a cutting-edge gadget called a Revisitor, which allows people to re-experience their memories. Without any other near-future technology in the novel, the appearance of the addictive, exhausting Revisitor is a robust challenge to one’s suspension of disbelief.
After an overlong middle section the pace accelerates towards the novel’s end – this is initially exciting but ultimately unsatisfying, the denouement recounted quickly and desultorily, in flashback. It’s as though the post-pandemic world her characters have to grapple with is of less interest to Fuller – or perhaps, as the real-life lockdowns ended, she no longer wanted to inhabit the world of the book herself.
• The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller is published by Penguin (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
