Umbrella Will Self

Umbrella  Will Self

Overview:

Umbrella sets out to understand the nature of the modern world by going back to the source – the industrial madness of World War One. Set across an entire century, Umbrella follows the complex story of Audrey Death, a feminist who falls victim to the encephalitis lethargica epidemic that rages across Europe, and Dr Zack Busner, who spends a summer waking the post-encephalitic patients under his care using a new and powerful drug.

 Will Self’s London is foul-humored, odorous, and greasy-streeted. It sprawls and heaves, enfolding upon its flyovers and two-up-two-down, red-brick, dendrite suburbs like a gigantic brain that must consume itself to grow. In the last decade, as he joined Britain’s new wave of psychogeographers with gusto, what Self hasn’t transplanted into fiction he walked with his own two feet: from the North to the Olympic-mangled East, all the way to Heathrow, and then from JFK into Manhattan just for the fun of it. To read his books, especially two recent works of nonfiction and the novel “Walking to Hollywood” is to realize this is a man with a destination.

“Umbrella” is his arrival point. Starting in Edwardian England and spanning a century during which mental-health care evolved from physical barbarity to chemical barbarity, the book, which was a finalist for last year’s Man Booker Prize, is a savage and deeply humane novel. It tells the story of Audrey Death, a woman diagnosed with encephalitis lethargica who spends nearly 50 years in the hospital in a state of increasing isolation from the world. As London is ravaged by war and time, and then a new kind of capitalism, Audrey remains locked inside herself without a key.

“Umbrella’’ is not an easy, light read, but then again, it’s not meant to be. As a reader, it can feel slightly disorienting to be without so many of the usual corners and boundaries of fiction. But it’s also exhilarating, especially when you realise Self has ripped them out so that he can meditate on what is inside us, what is outside us, and how hard it can be to know the difference.

In this sense, “Umbrella” is a triumph of form being used to give readers access to a world — and a woman — that is fractured, both inside and out. “The day is an elegant parasol tasselled with clouds,” Self writes, describing Stanley at war. “The night an umbrella with starry holes torn in its cover.” With this magnificent novel Will Self reminds that he is Britain’s reigning poet of the night.

ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

Sincerelyours

And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!