re:mote voices

Title: Bright Young Things
Author: Scarlett Thomas
Publisher:Flame

Scarlett Thomas’ first three novels are the elusive Dead Clever, In Your Face and Seaside – all of which feature the amateur detective and literary lecturer Lilly Pascalle. Bright Young Things is fortunately a little easier to find, and her first post-Pascalle novel – though it has since been followed by Going Out, and we should soon be seeing the publication of Pop Co.

Bright Young Things, like the subsequent Going Out, is particularly British, densely layered pop culture together in vivid and amusing characters. The results always make me wonder what someone outside the UK would make of her work. Though with that, the lengthy discussions about Australian soap operas, Japanese films and computer games, probably do provide something for a more global audience. Set in 1999, and published in 2001, there is a very much of its moment feel to Scarlett’s writing, which will perhaps date it in the years to come, but with the density there is such an authenticity, making Bright Young Things a very valid snap shot of a time.

The base idea of Bright Young Things comes from a Big Brother/Survivor generation, though without the camera crews that go with that. The first part of the book introduces us to six characters, who through the course of their section come across as advert in the Guardian newspaper, looking for “bright young things” along with a PO Box number in Edinburgh. The six characters are all at an awkward phase in their life – art student turned escort girl, film school graduate working in an old people home, photographer wannabe hanging out with drug dealers, computer programmer just fired from his tech support job, Cambridge math’s graduate wishing he was more like his pop heroes and an isolationist graduate in philosophy.

With the start of part two the six characters wake up on a remote island, outside the only house on the island, which has been stocked with enough food and supplies to provide for a long stay. The last thing any of them can remember is arriving at the Bright Young Things interview and being given what must have been drugged coffee. Thus we have the set up, six bright strangers abandoned on a remote island –what will they do?

The answer turns out to be that they will sit and talk a lot. The computer expert takes the mobile phones apart, initially with the theory that he will make a boosted model allowing them to call for help – but instead creates an ultimate snake tournament, the cannibalised phone pads creating two player action. The first night they talk about what their favourites are. The first day the get the generator together, check out supplies, and the like. The second night they play truth and dare, leading to a lot silliness, but in the process of these games we get a look into the characters.

In a lot of ways these kind of interactions follow the same voyeuristic appeals as the afore mentioned television programmes which bring people together. But here things are different, the characters all struggling to prove how cool they are, and in the process exposing themselves in ways you would never get on tv programmes. Especially as the chapters alternate between the view points of each of the six characters, demonstrating the different ways they see each other and themselves. The results are a striking pop novel, which really feels like it creates a cultural slice, while at the same time there is the undercurrent of something more sinister, which took me a little by surprise, the question of why they are really here and the intent of their abductors remains as a darker edge to the narrative.

Like In Your Face, which was the last and recent novel I read by Scarlett, I found myself reading Bright Young Things in one day – I just love the feel of her work and how easy it is to kick back read, and enjoy.