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by R.C. Sherriff
Meet the Stevens family, as they prepare to embark on their yearly holiday to the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first made the trip to Bognor Regis on their honeymoon, and the tradition has continued ever since. They stay in the same guest house and follow the same carefully honed schedule—now accompanied by their three children, twenty-year-old Mary, seventeen-year-old Dick, and little brother Ernie.
Arriving in Bognor they head to Seaview, the guesthouse where they stay every year. It's a bit shabbier than it once was—the landlord has died and his wife is struggling as the number of guests dwindles every year. But the family finds bliss in booking a slightly bigger cabana, with a balcony, and in their rediscovery of the familiar places they visit every year.
Mr. Stevens goes on his annual walk across the downs, reflecting on his life, his worries and disappointments, and returns refreshed. Mrs. Stevens treasures an hour spent sitting alone with her medicinal glass of port. Mary has her first small taste of romance. And Dick pulls himself out of the malaise he's sunk into since graduation, resolving to work towards a new career. The Stevenses savor every moment of their holiday, aware that things may not be the same next year.
Delightfully nostalgic and soothing, The Fortnight in September is an extraordinary novel about ordinary people enjoying life's simple pleasures.
"All men are equal on their holidays: all are free to dream their castles without thought of expense, or skill of architect."
In April 2020, several weeks into a stressful nationwide COVID lockdown in our resident country of Spain, I read an article in which novelists were asked to suggest books that would "inspire, uplift, and offer escape."
Many of the writers didn't seem to understand the assignment. "I don't go to novels for comfort," stated one. Others made decidedly harrowing recommendations, such as one novelist's suggestion of Chuck Palahniuk's bleak satire Survivor (the writer adding, "When I say fun, it's about a death cult, so it's not light fun"). This was not my idea of inspiration, uplift, or comfort—the very elements I craved at that particularly apprehensive moment in history.
Thankfully, Kazuo Ishiguro gave a superb recommendation: R.C. Sherriff's The Fortnight in September, a new-to-me British novel first published in the early 1930s. According to Ishiguro, the novel was "just about the most uplifting, life-affirming novel I can think of right now." Now here was exactly what I was looking for. I immediately ordered a copy, dove in, and lost myself in the story for a few days.
When I learned that BookBrowse reviewers were highlighting older titles in this issue, I remembered The Fortnight in September. While the lockdown phase of the COVID pandemic may be behind us (knock on wood), it feels as though recent tumultuous political events may once again stimulate readers' appetites for novels that provide uplift, escape, and—at least momentary—comfort.
Sherriff's novel follows the Stevens family of Dorset—Ernest, an accounts clerk; his wife, Flossie; daughter Mary (age 19), a dressmaker's assistant; and sons Dick (17), a stationer's clerk, and young Ernie (10)—on their annual two-week family trip to the southern seaside resort town of Bognor Regis (see Beyond the Book) to which they have returned every summer since Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first visited on their honeymoon twenty years earlier.
The book opens with the flurry of preparations taking place the afternoon before the holiday begins, in recognition that anticipation can be the highlight of any journey. The rest of the novel relates the days that follow and in close character observation captures the family's delight in stepping away from routine jobs for two weeks of blissful freedom. What happens, you ask? Well, honestly, not much. Family members gather for meals, play games on the beach, attend a concert, walk along the shore, meet new friends, and attend a fancy lunch at the home of an insufferable wealthy family.
As the focus moves from one character to another, the reader begins to build a sturdy appreciation for the dynamics that create this highly functioning domestic unit. The novel's events are relatively mild, but as they become important to the family, they do to the reader as well. This is a family that shows its connection through small, non-cloying acts of thoughtfulness and kindness. The novel is narrowly focused and provides a compelling exercise in noticing modest joys and overcoming small hurdles.
The Fortnight in September was the first novel by Robert Cedric (R.C.) Sherriff, a young playwright whose 1929 play Journey's End had seen immediate success. The play was based on Sherriff's own traumatic experiences in the First World War; as second lieutenant in the Ninth East Surrey Regiment, he was severely wounded at Ypres (where a horrifying four-fifths of the original British Expeditionary Force were killed) and hospitalized for six months.
This was followed by The Fortnight in September, in many ways the exact opposite of a war novel but still speaking directly to the yearning that must have been felt by Sherriff and other young soldiers when they were stationed far from home. In the novel, Sherriff captures the quiet fulfilment of ordinary lives. "I wanted to write about simple, uncomplicated people doing normal things."
Perhaps this is what Ishiguro had in mind when he recommended the book during the COVID lockdown and why this novel is so enjoyable to read. During those early months of the pandemic, I found myself missing simple things most, like a casual lunch with a friend, a hike with my son, or even a friendly chat with the cafe barista. Comfort lies in reminding ourselves of the familiar, unspectacular moments of ordinary life. Sherriff understands, perhaps as only a veteran of trench warfare can, that in any crisis we most crave the quotidian over the extraordinary.
Book reviewed by Danielle McClellan
The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff takes place in 1930 at the West Sussex seaside resort town of Bognor Regis on the south coast of England. The Stevens family is spending two weeks at the same holiday boarding house that they have been visiting since Mr. and Mrs. Stevens spent their honeymoon there two decades earlier.
For the American reader, the name Bognor Regis may be less familiar than other more well-known UK seaside destinations such as Brighton, Newquay, Scarborough, or Blackpool. What is the history of this seaside resort? What made it a popular destination for over one hundred years? How has it fared in today's travel climate?
The town of Bognor has one of the oldest recorded Saxon place names in Sussex. In a document from 680 AD, it is referred to as Bucgan ora, meaning Bucge's shore or landing place (Bucge being a female Saxon name). It later became known as Bognor, and up through the 18th century, it was a quiet fishing village that was also occasionally utilized by smugglers.
According to the town's historical website, in 1784, Sir Richard Hotham, a British MP, visited the town to experience the recuperative qualities of sea air. He liked the area so much that he decided to turn the village into a resort. He bought up 1600 acres of land and, in addition to building himself a sprawling mansion (now called Hotham Park House), he constructed large, terraced houses to entice wealthier visitors to his exclusive seaside destination.
Hotham was a man of vision and excellent timing. Seaside holidays in the UK were just beginning to gain popularity in the 18th century as interest gradually shifted from the health benefits of bathing at inland spas—such as the famous thermal spas of Bath, the setting of two Jane Austen novels (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion)—to the increasingly fashionable alternative of bathing in the sea.
Initially, seaside resorts were mostly accessible to the wealthy, but by the late 19th century these beach holidays became popular for a broader group of UK citizens. This was largely due to the expansion of the railway and the introduction of the bank holiday in 1872. By the beginning of the 20th century, millions of people headed to the seashore each year. The resort town of Bognor began to grow rapidly when the railway arrived in 1864. Many artists and writers were drawn to the beauty of the region. For example, while holidaying in Bognor in 1923, James Joyce wrote part of his novel Finnegans Wake.
Certainly, Bognor received its greatest boost in 1929 when King George V spent three months there recuperating from lung surgery. His doctors believed that Bognor's fresh sea air and sunshine would help with the king's recovery. King George and Queen Mary stayed in Bognor for a total of 13 weeks, and they entertained many visitors, including their granddaughter Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) who was only a toddler at the time. After the king returned to London, he bestowed upon Bognor the honor of its Regis suffix, and the town became known as Bognor Regis. (There is a popular rumor—probably apocryphal—that in January 1936, as King George V lay dying, someone in the room told him that he would soon be well enough to again visit Bognor to recuperate. His final words were said to be: "Bugger Bognor!")
It continued to be a popular resort through the 1950s, but by the 1970s many of Bognor Regis's original Victorian buildings were demolished. The introduction of inexpensive flights and package holidays to Spanish hotspots further eroded the popularity of domestic resort holidays in general, and the town of Bognor Regis saw gradual decline over the years. These days, the visitors still come, but Bognor Regis is a faint echo of what it once was. Its crime rate is one of the highest in the region, and in a 2025 survey of "UK's Best Seaside Towns," Which? Magazine reports that Bognor Regis now rates as one of the least desirable seaside towns in the UK, quite a comedown indeed from its heyday as a royal retreat.
The beach at Bognor Regis, August 1990, courtesy of Barry Shimmon, CC-BY-SA 2.0
by Percival Everett
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies―his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer's, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father's suicide seven years before.
In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins's bestseller. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is―under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh―and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.
Erasure by Percival Everett, first published in 2001, has reached great heights with its author's escalating fame and the 2023 film adaptation American Fiction. But it retains within the confines of its pages an odd smallness. Like much of Everett's work, it feels blunt yet malleable, static but approachable from multiple perspectives, like a sculpture meant to create optical illusions that depend on your particular distance from and orientation to it.
Protagonist Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is a middle-aged professor and writer of relatively obscure intellectual fiction. A significant part of the book centers on Monk's frustration with how he is limited as a Black author. As he struggles with sales, he witnesses others being rewarded with a place in a narrow field of literary success by appealing to white people's desire for representations of Black stereotypes, namely Juanita Mae Jenkins, made famous by her bestseller We's Lives In Da Ghetto. In response, he crafts his own "ghetto" novel that he supposedly intends to be a parody of such books (the full text of which is included within Everett's novel), first called My Pafology—later, Monk insists, under cover of the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, that the title be changed to Fuck. It follows a young man named Van Go Jenkins who turns to a life of crime. Surprisingly for Monk, the book is taken seriously by a publisher and picked up with a hefty advance.
In a simpler novel, the driving force behind Monk's writing of My Pafology/Fuck might only be Jenkins' book. But in the story-outside-the-story, that is, Monk's story, the inciting incident that seems to spur the plot into action is the murder of his sister Lisa, a doctor shot at her clinic serving a poor section of DC, probably by an anti-abortion extremist. Along with the family housekeeper, Lorraine, Lisa has until now taken primary responsibility for the care of her and Monk's mother, who is developing signs of dementia. Their father is long gone, having died by suicide years earlier. Their brother Bill has made a lucrative living as a plastic surgeon, but, having recently admitted to his wife that he is gay, he is in the process of losing nearly everything to her and their children in the separation, and becoming an emotional wreck. All of this leaves Monk to deal with the logistics and finances of their mother's situation, which he means to mitigate with his parody-turned-anticipated-bestseller.
Erasure is many different things. It is narratively challenging—including not just the internal novel but additional snippets of Monk's writing, bursts of Latin and French, and other textual tidbits not immediately obvious in meaning—yet still relatively straightforward, accessible enough to enjoy from beginning to end without picking apart too much. That is, if you choose not to dwell on Monk's notes and elaborations, and thereby miss out on the pleasure of getting lost in a Joycean thicket. It is a linear and entertaining, if dramatic and fever-dreamish, series of events. Its relationship to real-world culture has shifted, somewhat, since first publication. As Everett commented in 2024, the landscape of American publishing has changed in the ensuing years, though the simplified thinking around race that created the conditions featured in Erasure remains. Perhaps partly because of this, it doesn't seem outdated, but another reason for its ongoing relevance is its seemingly endless layers.
One of these is the significant presence of guns, which may not appear significant at first glance because this is a basic reality of America that hasn't shifted much, if at all, since Erasure's release. In Monk's novel, Van is set on obtaining a gun, with which he intends to rob the store of a Korean man he has a grudge against. Monk's father, a veteran of the Korean War, shot himself, and Monk will later find that he was keeping a secret related to his time in the military. One of the events that pushes Monk to finally have his mother committed to a care facility is a nerve-wracking incident in which she aims a loaded gun at him. And of course, Lisa is killed by gunfire in her clinic. A reader can analyze Monk's conscious or subconscious reasons for integrating firearms and certain parallels into his fictional narrative the way he does, to consider what his choices say about the American military's overseas reach and its role in immigration, who is incentivized to join the military, America's cultural weaponization of East Asian immigrants against Black people, and so on. One can also consider the irony that alongside Van's participation in gun violence within his impoverished world, Monk, an educated man from a well-off family who seems to make no habit of being around guns, has been unable to avoid a brush with at least the strong possibility of every type of firearm tragedy: accident, suicide, murder.
But more notable than any of this is that we don't see Monk, a highly analytical thinker, comment on these elements or ponder how he may have put his own experience into his book. What he does dwell on is how the hype around the novel threatens his artistic self. As he attempts to navigate his new universe, appearing in various forms as Stagg Leigh—behind a screen on a talk show, in dark glasses at a meeting about movie rights—he operates as a split personality, and considers how to resolve this. The answer seems obvious. As his agent Yul remarks, his other books will probably sell better once he comes out as the author of this one. But Monk tiptoes around this inevitability like it's an impossibility.
One of Erasure's textual interludes consists of a dialogue between the artists Robert Rauschenberg and Willem de Kooning, based on real events. Rauschenberg offers to fix de Kooning's roof in exchange for a drawing, saying that it doesn't matter what it's of because he intends to erase it. Weeks later, Rauschenberg informs de Kooning that he has erased the drawing, taken credit for this "Erased Drawing" himself, and sold the "erasing."
What is the erasing in Erasure? Stagg Leigh's novel and its hype blotting out the multiplicity of Black literature and existence? The publishing industry and mainstream white readership doing the same and patting themselves on the back for it? Monk erasing himself as a writer with the persona of Stagg Leigh? Or is Everett just messing with us by hinting at there being any one particular parallel to this cute philosophical vignette? The book, with what it leaves out, doesn't allow any of these interpretations to be the only story. With all that's packed into Erasure—its madcap pace, its series of urgent situations, its literary doodlings—it's easy to be distracted, to not notice what's missing. For instance, despite being inside Monk's head, we know so little of his conscious intentions, what he was thinking as he wrote his novel. And what was he thinking and feeling following the death of his sister, a death barely remarked upon, a death inevitably bound up in politics and race but that can finally be assigned no meaning? A better question might be, who would want to think or feel anything about that? To have thoughts and feelings about an event whose reasons or causes do nothing to mitigate its stark, undeniable result, a devastating, violent event whose full impact on Monk we never see—except, of course, in how it seems part of all we do see.
Book reviewed by Elisabeth Cook
Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure was adapted for film as American Fiction in 2023, leading to director Cord Jefferson's Oscar win for Best Adapted Screenplay. The year after, Everett's new novel James scooped up major awards, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. While these exposures and honors gained him some long overdue stature in the world of mainstream literature, Everett had already built a decades-long career with his inventive, often satirical and frequently acclaimed literary novels. He may be more adept than any other contemporary writer at marrying low-brow tropes with high-brow concepts—or rather, making these categories lose all meaning. Despite some distinctive elements to his writing style, the ground he has covered as an author is vast. Below are a few of his novels besides Erasure that may be enticing to those just discovering his fiction, though these still represent only a small portion of his overall body of work.
James (2024)
James reimagines Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved character Jim. Everett's take on the classic mixes sharp action sequences with entertaining explorations of language and the concept of freedom. Its relatively straightforward story (particularly compared to some of his previous work) offers appeal for book clubs and those who enjoy meaningful historical fiction.
Dr. No (2022)
If James isn't weird enough for you, try Everett's take on James Bond. This clever and absurdist caper features mathematician Wala Kitu and his beautiful colleague Eigen Vector, self-identified Bond villain John Milton Bradley Sill, and elements of real history revolving around the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Trees (2021)
The Trees addresses the history of lynching in America both with and without doses of heavy humor, using a variety of narrative forms and storytelling traditions, including zombie fiction. Devastating, profound, and absolutely outrageous, this novel challenges the reader to make meaning of its clues, testing the limits of reading and literature, and creates surprising possibilities for interacting with the past.
Telephone (2020)
The format of Telephone is a telling example of the playfulness Everett brings to his work: three versions of the book exist, each with various differing details and a different ending. The story focuses on a geologist dealing with the tragedy of his daughter's deteriorating health, and explores aspects of narrative, grief, loss, and fate.
So Much Blue (2017)
This may be the closest thing Everett has written to "normal" contemporary literary fiction, and would make a great follow-up read for book clubs who enjoyed James but aren't necessarily hoping for more of the same. It deftly juggles three timelines in the life of artist Kevin Pace, introducing plot points related to an extramarital affair, war in El Salvador, and a secret painting.
Assumption (2011)
Assumption is the kind of book that inspires strong opinions. Technically a group of three novellas, it includes the throughline of a murder mystery featuring Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a town in New Mexico. Those with specific ideas about how mysteries should be structured should probably pass, but readers who welcome the unexpected may find themselves fascinated.
by Dwyer Murphy
As they hurtle into midlife, Jim and his closest college friends get together to rekindle the bonds of their friendship in his family's beautiful, generations-old vacation home along Buzzards Bay, the demands of work and family having caused them to drift apart over recent years. But what begins as a quiet and restorative seaside escape takes a darker turn when Bruce, an aloof but successful writer, disappears from the house without a trace, sending the group into an uneasy tension.
Meanwhile, a series of mysterious break-ins besets the town, which is the site of an old Spiritualist campground turned idyllic fishing village. After a series of uncanny disturbances at the house, Jim can't help but feel that someone—or something—is watching them from the other side of the marsh. And with the arrival of a strange, seductive guest at their home, the group begins to question the very nature of their experiences—along with their already precarious ties with one other.
In The House on Buzzards Bay, Dwyer Murphy returns with a chilling, atmospheric page-turner that explores the bonds of friendship, the growing accumulation of life's responsibilities, and whether our youthful dreams can endure the complexities of adulthood.
If Jim's parents hadn't died when he was a teenager, the house on Buzzards Bay would have passed to them. Instead, at age 25 and just out of law school, Jim finds himself alone with the keys. Though young, he instinctively knows what to do with his inheritance: split ownership equally among himself and his four closest friends—Rami, Maya, Shannon, and Bruce. The five, who met at college, have formed, for Jim, the family he had lost. So it seems natural to him that they should all share this sliver of the New England coastline and use it as a base for their subsequent summer get-togethers.
They're the sort of well-heeled group who feel at home in a nineteenth-century beach-front mansion. Although all trained to be diplomats, only Rami has entered the world of international bureaucracy. Jim practices law, and Maya has become an art teacher; at the moment she's also looking after her partner Shannon, heavily pregnant with the couple's first child. Bruce, the black sheep of the friend group, is the author of a widely read series of books in which a philosophy professor saves the world from a string of "grave conspiracies." The series has made him rich and reasonably famous, but his friends have a habit of turning their noses up at his particular brand of pulp fiction. As the group approaches 40, their busy lives ensure they meet up at the house far less regularly than they did in their 20s—but this year, by some stroke of luck, all five are free to spend the entire summer together. Cue long, hot days with only alcohol and each other for company.
The House on Buzzards Bay would risk being yet another rehash of The Big Chill for a new generation, except for author Dwyer Murphy's more sinister sensibilities. While he utilizes all the hidden secrets and jealous rivalries that are the standard fare of "friend group" fiction, he also feeds a deeper unease into the story. Tensions bubbling to the surface and a fist fight on the Fourth of July are to be expected from the genre; even after Bruce takes off without a word one evening, his friends assume he's being melodramatic and needs his space. But when, a few days later, the gang returns from a trip into town to find a young Frenchwoman called Camille sitting in the kitchen, claiming Bruce invited her before he vanished, Jim gets the definite impression that something is not quite right. No one remembers hearing anything about any invite, but who would kick out someone so charming, worldly, and seductive? Sure enough, it isn't long before this stranger has insinuated herself into the lives—and, as it turns out, beds—of the friend group.
A slim novel at under 300 pages, The House on Buzzards Bay is a slow burner all the same. Murphy is more interested in crafting an atmosphere than a plot; his focus is on carefully stacking up moments of uncertainty, each one knocking the Dutch angle of Jim's narration even more off-kilter. What's Rami been telling Jim's wife that he's not been telling him? Who's been sleeping in the house in the off-season? And why won't Bruce answer his phone? While Murphy's deadpan style has a tendency to frustrate in the novel's first half, it pays off to a large extent in the second, after Camille's sudden appearance. In true gothic fashion, her arrival also brings the revelation that the house was built by Jim's ancestors as a home for the region's once-burgeoning Spiritualist community—one of the many "small, hopeful offshoots" putting utopian ideas to the test in nineteenth-century America (see Beyond the Book). Not unexpectedly, however, a séance in homage to his forebears does nothing to put Jim's mind at ease.
After An Honest Living and The Stolen Coast—two novels steeped in hardboiled neo-noir—The House on Buzzards Bay is something of a departure for Murphy, editor-in-chief of the CrimeReads website. Jim may have the vague foreboding that some grave crime has been committed somewhere along the line, but the novel is much more in the vein of brooding gothic horror than detective-led thriller. Nonetheless, just as the house's past owners seem to haunt its corridors long after their deaths, Murphy's tale of a summer gone terribly wrong has the potential to haunt his readers long after the final page.
Book reviewed by Alex Russell
In The House on Buzzards Bay, Dwyer Murphy's gothic thriller, a group of former college roommates reunite for their summer vacation in a beachfront mansion. The house, owned equally by all six friends, was built by the local Spiritualist community in the nineteenth century as a home for the many people coming to join the sect. As Camille, an expert in communal movements, points out to the novel's narrator, the Spiritualists were just one example of "what was going on in America in those days, especially in the Northeast. Small, hopeful offshoots, everywhere you looked." Indeed, with the industrial revolution changing the fabric of society and opening the door to new ways of living, nineteenth-century America was a breeding ground for communal movements rooted in utopian ideals. Murphy's novel—which touches on ideas of communal ownership and polyamory—takes inspiration from two of the period's most famous examples, Brook Farm and the Oneida Community.
Brook Farm
The community at Brook Farm outside of Boston was founded in 1841 by George and Sophia Ripley, transcendentalists who counted Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller among their friends. Conceived as a pastoral idyll in which labor was divided and carried out for the common good, it was to be, in George Ripley's words, the "city of God, anew." As an escape from the disorder of a rapidly industrializing Boston, the project was quick to attract the attention of New Englanders with an interest in social reform; although Emerson and Fuller declined an invitation to join full-time, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne was a founding member alongside the Ripleys.
For all the project's grand visions, however, the idea of middle-class intellectuals laying down the pen and taking up the plow was greeted more as a curiosity than a serious invitation to change the world. A short daytrip from Boston, Brook Farm became something of a tourist destination: in 1844, its guestbook registered 4,000 visitors as the settlement itself struggled to push its permanent population above 90. Many initial members quickly became disillusioned with the project—including Hawthorne, who left not long after the founding with a demand to be reimbursed for his initial investment. Such instability made it hard to maintain a self-sufficient community, and Brook Farm eventually ran into debt. When the uninsured community center burnt down in 1846, it proved financially ruinous, and the project was abandoned the following year. Yet the idea of Brook Farm lived on, and Murphy's dark novel captures what might be its most enduring legacy: the promise of paradise, and the knowing cynicism which holds that every shot to reach it is bound to end in disaster.
Oneida Community
Shortly after the collapse of the Brook Farm project, a preacher named John Humphrey Noyes launched a different utopian scheme that would prove both more radical and longer lasting. The Oneida Community, located outside the small city of Oneida in upstate New York, was established in 1848 on the basis of the idea that the second coming of Christ had already occurred and that humanity could therefore start bringing about heaven on Earth. To achieve this, Noyes advocated a radical communalism—what he referred to explicitly as "Bible communism"—according to which everything was to be shared: money, possessions, even sexual partners.
"Complex marriage," as Noyes termed it, was the community's most scandalous practice in the eyes of genteel nineteenth-century society. Each member of the Oneida clan was considered married to every other (with all the freedoms that entailed), but men and women were actively discouraged from what the community sometimes referred to as "sticky bonds": strong attachments that came dangerously close to more traditional monogamous relationships. As Camille notes in The House on Buzzards Bay, "Every utopian experiment ever devised collapsed, ultimately, under the pressures of sex." Nevertheless, the Oneida community proved surprisingly resilient—lasting over 30 years, in total—and over the centuries its "free love" ideals have woven themselves into the American cultural consciousness. More than once in Dwyer's new novel, for example, do the friends toy with practicing their very own form of "complex marriage."
Communal utopias in American history weren't limited to the ones above. Various expressions of the idea, such as in the form of Black utopias, arose from different needs and existed both in and past the nineteenth century. But it is undeniable that many modern attempts to achieve a perfect life together—including more recent counter-culture communes and those embarked upon by the group of friends in The House on Buzzards Bay—owe a debt to these "small, hopeful offshoots."
Wood engraving of George Ripley, originally printed in Harper's Weekly, 1880, courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Stereoscopic image of the Oneida Community, 1860–1880, courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
by Aisling Rawle
Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.
Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she'll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win?
Addictive and prescient, The Compound is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends.
Apathetic twentysomething Lily is beautiful but otherwise unremarkable, as she will be the first to tell you. She's bored with her job and doesn't get along with her mom, who she lives with, and she doesn't have any talents or ambitions. She doesn't have to think twice about applying to get on the show—a popular reality television series that blends elements of Love Island and Survivor. Lily and nineteen other contestants find themselves living in a remote desert compound, where they have to work together to compete for prizes—some of them luxuries, some of them necessities, like food and furniture to outfit their home. All the women must sleep next to a male contestant and vice versa, and if a contestant fails to pair up, they will be banished from the compound.
Cameras are watching at all times, capturing every moment of the day, and this footage will be edited down to episodes that are aired daily, but Lily forgets about this almost immediately. These cameras aren't manned by a production crew—the contestants are entirely isolated and left to their own devices, with minimal rules about how they need to conduct themselves. The most critical rule is that they are not allowed to discuss their lives outside of the show, or an unspecified punishment will be administered. Contestants quickly learn a new way of conversing, where they don't talk about anything of consequence, they simply trade inane observations, which after only a few days starts to feel freeing rather than stifling to Lily and the others.
The novel takes place entirely within the compound, starting when Lily wakes up on her first day on the show, and we know very little about her personal life. We eventually learn what the contestants do for work in the outside world, but we don't know where they live, what their hobbies are, whether or not they have siblings. When details from outside slip in, there's a vaguely dystopian air to them—"the wars" are mentioned, climate disasters are hinted at, and there's an overwhelming sense of nihilism in the way that Lily thinks about her previous life compared to life in the compound, which she's willing to do anything to hold onto. To Lily and the other contestants, the outside world feels like it falls away entirely as the compound becomes their new reality.
"I tried to imagine what it would be like to go home. The endless talk of the wars, and the masks that we wore in the cities and big towns, and the dreary gray skies, and evenings in front of the television. [...] What did it matter to wake up at the same time every morning and wear the same clothes and try to eat more protein but less sugar, when an earthquake or tsunami or a bomb might end it all at any minute? Or maybe we would all continue to boil, slowly but surely, in the mess that we pretended was an acceptable place to live."
Fusing an addicting page-turner of a narrative with a potent social commentary, debut author Aisling Rawle elevates a simple reality dating TV show premise into an unforgettable literary achievement. Contestants are subjected to heartbreak and humiliation in the name of entertainment for the unseen audience, which they submit themselves to willingly for the vague promise of a better life—the grand prize is really just more of the same; the winning contestant is allowed to continue to live in the compound for as long as they want, where they are granted all the luxuries they ask for. For Lily, an infinity of mindless consumerism is the only ambition she can dream up. For the reader, it's unsettling to confront the fact that Lily's existence in the compound may not be so different from our own under late-stage capitalism.
Therein lies the strength of The Compound—the expert way in which Rawle conceals dark truths about our present society and human nature under the gossipy veneer of reality TV drama.
Book reviewed by Rachel Hullett
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Aisling Rawle's debut novel The Compound takes place on an unnamed reality competition television show, where contestants live together, compete in challenges to earn rewards, and gradually get banished until only one remains to win the grand prize. As it borrows recognizable elements from popular reality shows like Survivor and Love Island, The Compound feels almost like turning on the TV on a Friday night to binge the latest Netflix series. But it's hardly the first novel to utilize the backdrop of reality television—a premise that has been explored through a variety of genres, from literary fiction to thrillers to romance to science fiction.
The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll follows two sisters who have long had a competitive relationship. The younger sister, Brett, has become a success, her life being filmed and aired on the reality show Goal Diggers, but when older sister Kelly infiltrates the show, she threatens to expose a secret that could ruin Brett.
Anita Kelly's romance novel Love & Other Disasters follows the first openly nonbinary contestant on popular reality cooking show Chef's Special, London, who falls for their competitor, the recently divorced Dahlia. Shenanigans ensue, but as the finale draws closer, London and Dahlia have to ask themselves whether their relationship can withstand the heat of the competition.
The Villain Edit by Laurie Devore follows romance novelist Jacqueline Matthis, whose floundering career leads to a comeback plan which involves appearing on the biggest dating show in the country, the 1. In the style of The Bachelor, the 1 features a group of women all vying for the affections of a single man, Marcus. But when Jac realizes her last one-night stand, Henry, is one of the show's producers, they begin to have an affair, which she knows will complicate her chances with Marcus if it comes to light.
In The Book of Essie by Meghan Maclean Weir, Essie Hicks is the youngest child on the wildly popular reality show Six for Hicks, which chronicles the lives of Essie's evangelical family. Essie, who has grown up in the spotlight, becomes pregnant, and her horrified parents consult the producers, who discuss how best to handle Essie's pregnancy in a way that will grow their ratings.
The Last One by Alexandra Oliva is a post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction thriller in which twelve contestants are sent into the wilderness to survive. When a global disaster occurs, contestants don't know how much of it is real and how much is part of the game. One contestant referred to as Zoo by the producers must struggle through the wilderness to survive and win, even as the world she left behind to join the competition no longer exists.
Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah takes place within the prison industrial complex, as inmates take part in CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment. In this highly controversial program, prisoners compete in gladiator-style combat against one another in order to secure their freedom.
Though this array of titles is diverse both in genre and subject matter, all grapple with a similar question raised by Aisling Rawle in The Compound: how do we draw the line between reality and fiction when we consume reality for entertainment?
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