They
By
Kay Dick
1977 • 94 pages
Ratings5
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings5
Average rating3.6
A dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression—“queer, English, a masterpiece.” (Hilton Als) Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing “They” creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick’s They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.
Reviews with the most likes.
This was really interesting. It's really just a bunch of scenes in our narrator's life in this “dystopian” England, rather than a cohesive story. There's an uncomfortable undercurrent to the whole, but hope as well.
We don't really know our narrator, don't know if they're a man or a woman, but it doesn't ultimately matter, but we know they write and love books and their friends. The friends are artists of various sorts. And who They are isn't clear either. They want conformity and don't want all the art. But who and why, we don't know.
I wish we had a bit more context for what was going on - it was a little too sparse in some ways - but there's something interesting in being able to come up with your own ideas about what's going on here. For such a sparse book there's a lot to consider. (The writing is gorgeous, too, which helps.)
Because of the way I read this (audiobook along with the text) I got a foreword by Carmen Maria Machado and an afterword by Lucy Scholes. There's some overlap in what they talk about, but both have insights the other doesn't mention. You can't go wrong with either version I think. I'm so glad McNally Editions is publishing “lost” books like this.
Perhaps I was misled by the new Carmen Mara Machado foreword, but I found this less chilling than I expected to. There was a lack of ratcheting up of the tension or consequences, when in fact there was instead a sort of tidal feeling, an in, and then inevitably an out.
