Paul Fulcher's Reviews > Universality

'We're open to everyone,' Indiya agrees. That said, the Universalists are a noticeably homogeneous group: young, middle class and white. 'This lifestyle takes a leap of faith,' she explains. Intentional living requires a step away from the 'activism myopia' that can ('Understandably!' she stresses) afflict marginalised groups.

Natasha Brown’s Assembly was a brilliant debut and one of the finest novels of 2021, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Her sophomore novel, Universality, due out in 2025, is also destined to be a contender for major prizes. While it ostensibly is more conventional stylistically, in its impact it is even more challenging to the literary and political status quo.

It’s a novel about the power of words and stories – the stories we tell about others, the stories we tell ourselves and want to be told about us – and about privilege and about diversity, and the assumption that it’s others who benefit from both.

The first quarter of the novel is (in the novel’s fictional world), an extended magazine article, originally published in June 2021, a New Journalism style investigative piece entitled “A Fool’s Gold”, based on an odd incident during lockdown when an illegal rave ended with one person being rendered unconscious, struck by a 400 ounce gold bar (current bullion price, close to £800,000). As the article’s author explains:

Unravelling the events leading to this strange and unsettling night is well worth the trouble; a modern parable lies beneath, exposing the fraying fabric of British society, worn thin by late capitalism's relentless abrasion. The missing gold bar is a connecting node between an amoral banker, an iconoclastic columnist and a radical anarchist movement.

The novel then moves on to the author of the piece, Hannah, a previously struggling journalist, who is hosting a dinner party with her friends to celebrate the news that the story is being turned into a TV story, although a fictionalised version with details changed to make it even more resonant (e.g. a key character becomes black)

The truth, more often than not, benefited from the techniques of fiction. Every hack knew that.

Although as we learn how Hannah came to write the article, we realise this adage applies as much to her original piece.

The next section takes us to the story of the aforementioned “amoral banker”, Richard, original owner of the gold bar, whose life, to him entirely unfairly, has been ruined by the story.

And the final section is an interview at a leading Literature Festival of the “iconoclastic columnist” Lenny Leonard who by contrast, is a beneficiary, parlaying her notoriety into a new career as a crusader against woke capitalism and a move from the right-wing press to the Observer [as she mentions more than once, appearing alongside ‘Cohen’, an intriguing reference].

During that interview she explains her modus operandi and that of the paper, including quotes such as We tell you want you want to hear, while convincing you that it’s the truth, told as close to objectively as possible and Your readers come away believing they are aggrieved on someone else’s behalf.

And this is where the novel’s power lies.

Whereas Assembly gave us the single narrator’s searing perspective on everything she saw around her (including, to an extent, checking her own privilege as an Oxbridge-educator city worker), here, with the multiple perspectives, everyone sees themselves, and those like them, as the victim.

And the reader’s sympathy is then naturally drawn to those with who they identify – for me, far from being amoral, that would be banker Richard, at least for his professional (if not personal) life. I found myself nodding along with his lament when even an attempt, in GQ Magazine, to tell his side of the story turns into a hatchet job:

Richard couldn't quite understand what it was about him that rankled these people so much. Hadn't he simply done what he was supposed to do? He'd taken the eleven-plus, made it into the grammar school, and simply followed that life path to its inevitable conclusion. He didn't hurt anyone, he didn't exploit anyone. He tried, as much as was possible, to work hard and fair. After the crash, he'd moved into regulatory risk ... working to prevent another crisis. And, as the divisional head, he'd ensured that there were women in senior roles, along with a broadly diverse management team. Indeed, he now had a network of colleagues who credited him as a friend and a mentor. He was proud of that legacy. His was not the monoculture of commoditised socialism, with its vague, moralistic promise to end discrimination. He was actually doing his part by hiring qualified candidates and giving them the same chance at success that he himself had received. All these 'writers' did, as far as Richard could tell, was spread gossip for fun and profit, stoking outrage and discontent without actually fixing anything.

Inspiring stuff, at least to this reader. But that’s because as a white male (ex) banker from a working-class background, that’s not dissimilar to the story I tell myself as well – or indeed, of course, the story that Lou in Assembly told himself.

And at the novel’s other end, are the “radical anarchists”who, as per my opening quote, have moved, in their view, beyond the ‘activism myopia’ of more marginalised groups, to an oddly exclusive worldview for self-proclaimed Universalists.

So perhaps it is Lenny who is actually the one character who is most self-aware If anything, I’m a misanthrope. An equal-opportunity hater. Or is she the least self-aware character of all?

A novel which will provoke some fascinating and challenging discussions next year, and another brilliant novel from an author who, rightly, was named as one of the 2023 class of Granta Best of Young British Novelists, part of the 'A Fool’s Gold' piece featuring in the magazine.

A resounding 5 stars. Thanks to the author, via my twin, aka Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer, for the ARC.