Monday lunchtime: a bank is being robbed. Gunmen tell an old man to get down on the floor; he refuses. Behind him in the queue is Rada Kalenkova, an investigator for the Office of Assessment, whose job is to evaluate the lives of the recently deceased. The gang leader fires a shot and one - or two? - women are killed? Perhaps. Rada ignores them and tries to follow the old man instead. Back at the office, her boss calls in the Inquisitor, Lopez, to investigate her misconduct; her ambitious brother, D (for Dmitry), is delighted. But nothing about the robbery or the putative killings make sense. The robbers are police employees inspired by Willie Sutton (who, asked why he robbed banks, never actually said: 'That's where the money is.') The bank manager denis anyone was hurt, and his deputy lets D see the blood stains up the wall. Every enquiry leads towards Edward Likker, a renowned fixer. But Likker is dead - D is writing his assessment - and his lawyer may have cut his own throat with a bread knife. D and Rada don't do suicides - their own father, who might not have been Russian after all, might have killed himself. Or not. But when their colleague Alex goes to investigate Rodkin's death, he disappears. And what exactly is Lopez looking for?
The Fat of Fed Beasts is an ambitious literary mix of existential uncertainty, murder, bureaucracy, unreliable father figures and disaffected policemen. It asks why we do what we do, whether it matters, and what, if anything, our lives are worth. And it's funny.
About the Author :
Guy Ware's stories have appeared online, in magazines and in numerous anthologies. His collection, You Have 24 Hours to Love Us (2012), was longlisted for both the Frank O'Connor International Award and the Edge Hill Short Story prizes. Hostage was subsequently included in the Best British Short Stories 2013. The Fat of Fed Beasts is the first novel he hasn't put in a drawer and left there.
Review :
4/5 Rating. Alex, Rada, and D are ‘loss adjusters’ – they deal with lives that have ended, reporting on the worth. Alex gets up later than D and Rada. He wanted to be with Rada but she chose Gary. D is sick of Rada’s detailing and just completely sick of Alex, and hopes for better. Rada is in the bank when it’s robbed, can’t get the old man to lay on the floor and her following suspension leaves her aloof in the world. And then there are the demoted police who want to give something unlawful a try.
Fleshing out the shadowy metaphysical hints of Beckett’s novels, this intellectual romp is the best debut I have read in years.
But, this being a book set in 21st-century Britain, it is not only concerned with the fate of the soul and the nature of narrative, but also with guns, the ennui of daily life, minutely observed trivia and deep and dark matters; Quentin Tarantino is in the mix, as well as eschatology, the branch of theology concerned with the end of days. If you liked Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, you’ll love this. Guy Ware is also very good at black humour (“I’ve either got to actually hit someone or find some other way to calm myself down,” says the most violent and yobbish of the narrators, “because if I go on like this, I’m going to make myself ill”), and corny humour: on being told that the first stage of grief, in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s formula, is denial, a character replies “No, it’s not,” which got a laugh from me at least. The result of all this is the best debut novel I have read in years. I am now going to polish my shoes.
The staff of the office are revealed as gatekeepers to the afterlife, setting up a neat reversal in which determining the resting place of recently departed souls is treated like any normal job – employees rock up late and use work computers for their own projects – while mundane tasks, such as making couscous salad, are addressed with scholastic intensity.
About halfway through the book, Ware sheds light on the mysterious title. The fed beasts are from the Book of Isiah, one of those bloodthirsty sections about offerings and livestock slaughter and so on. But Ware’s disdain for the corporate world’s overfed beasts is apparent but rendered with enough empathy and humour that it does not overbear this delightful book.
