They by Kay Dick

 

They - A Sequence of Unease

by Kay Dick

with an introduction by Carmen Maria Machado

They, subtitled A Sequence of Unease, is a strange little novella first published in 1977 and now reissued by Faber Books. Its author, Kay Dick, was a bisexual intellectual who wrote fiction as well as literary biographies, reviews and journalistic pieces.  Her background must surely have shaped the concerns raised in this novella.

They is set during an unspecified time period (although, likely meant to be a contemporary one) in which England is slowly but surely being taken over by a class of loutish anti-intellectuals who use violent bullying tactics to eradicate the arts.  They go around the country burning books, destroying sculptures and paintings and generally stifling all attempts at creativity through acts of torture.   But the agenda of this philistine group is not limited to attacking the arts.  They also engage in wanton vandalism, encourage their children to be cruel to animals and urinate against public buildings, and look askance at persons who prefer to live alone (and who might therefore be tempted to think individually). 

The novella’s narrative approach is a strange and potentially confusing one.  Although written in the first person, we are told very little about the (unnamed) narrator except that the narrator (He? She? They?) appears to be a writer and moves in artistic circles.  The story is split into a number of vignettes which do not clearly follow one another.  Indeed, at times I even wondered whether the narrator was changing from one chapter/section to another although repeated references to the narrator’s dog suggest otherwise.   Although on the one hand this detached style makes it difficult to feel empathy with the characters, it does contribute very effectively to the strong sense of increasing danger and impending dread.  Dick taps into genre fiction to achieve her results.  Thus, They is a clear example of dystopian fiction, but it also has echoes of the horror genre in its description of the bucolic landscapes of England in the grips of an oppressive, suffocating threat.     

They reminded me somewhat of Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men (referenced by Carmen Maria Machado in her brief but insightful introduction to this Faber edition) as well as some of the more “political” of J.B. Priestley’s weird fiction.  But it is also very much its own thing, a disturbing little book which was (unsurprisingly) misunderstood on its first publication and now making a deserved return to print.  

ebook

Expected publication: February 1st 2022 by Faber Faber (first published 1977)