If you read my review of Tell Me I'm Worthless you won't be surprised that I had to read Rumfitt's latest novel as soon as I could. But what is Brainwyrms compared to the previous novel? More of the same? If that means 'something more or less along the lines of Tell Me I'm Worthless' then, well, no. If it means 'something just as powerful, unique, mind-breaking and transgressive' then an emphatic yes.
This is an intense one. There are warnings at the start and before relevant sections about the content and imagery, and, well, take those seriously. There is some truly sickening stuff in here - scenes that I find hard to shake weeks after reading it. I honestly think this book is a must-read if you can handle that, but don't say you weren't warned.
After the shock of the imagery, what will jump out at you is Rumfitt's insight and her sheer skill. Once again,Rumfitt doesn’t so much have her finger on the pulse of British society as she is ripping that artery open with necessary savagery. Rumfitt's prose can look spare on the page, but that belies the experience of reading it - the power of its rhythm, its escalation, its viscosity.
Both of the main characters are traumatised, wearing that trauma in different ways. Rumfitt's portrayal of their experiences, struggles, coping mechanisms, is subtle, showing how the pain and dissociation weaves throughout their lives, their personalities. This is a book suffused with pain, and with rage. But what sets this apart is the way these characters face repeated trauma in the ongoing narrative. Frankie's job moderating social media means she is exposed, again and again, to the most horrible, violent, hateful, disgusting images, videos and messages. Vanya flees one abusive situation to find themself in another. There is no straightforward path out of pain and into healing; our characters struggle through a constant nightmare. The book is bleak, its landscape a wasteland - because our time is bleak, our world a wasteland. It's a difficult read, and not just because of the graphic (I cannot stress enough how graphic) imagery.
Parasites and hosts. Bodies subsisting on one another, merging with one another, inhabiting one another. What is a parasite? Frankie has an impregnation fetish, and at one point a messageboard user jokes that the closest thing they've had to hosting a parasite was pregnancy. What does it mean to hold another being inside your body? What if you love your tapeworm? What, then, is the parasite on the body politic? Rumfitt disgustingly, delightfully, blurs the boundaries between individual and individual, body and body. In an early scene, solidarity within the LGBTQ+ community is seen as a merging of bodies into a single collective mass that drives off threats. This is darkly mirrored by the eldritch nightmare of the corporation and then by the orgiastic merging of the ruling class, the ministers and journalists and landlords that hammer in place the idea, the reality, that nothing good is possible, that hate and poverty and division are eternal, that everything must and will get worse and go on getting worse. Because what's really parasitic, what really wriggles inside you, and refuses to be removed, is a thought. An idea. An obsession, a fixation, an ideology. The toxic person you can't stop wanting. The intrusive thought that keeps on scuttling out of its hole. The hate that takes root and begins to infest every aspect of your life, of a political order, of a society. Rumfitt raises and teases questions, metaphors, comparisons that jar the reader in the best way, raising them wriggling out of the muck of British society. This is a perfect evocation of Britain in the present moment - the horror that it is, where it grew from and where it is going.
In a world of increasingly sanitised, mass-market appeal storytelling, this book is... Well, not a breath of fresh air. A breath of filthy, fetid, foul air. But that's exactly what's needed in the present moment. I understand that it may not be to everyone's taste. It is pretty disgusting. But at the same time, I want to shove this book in the faces of everyone I know. Look at what horror can be! Look! Did you know it could be like this? Did you? Then why didn't you tell me earlier?
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