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https://theconversation.com/a-dystopian-or-utopian-future-claire-g-colemans-new-novel-enclave-imagines-both-182859>
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Review: Enclave – Claire G. Coleman (Hachette)
I was reading Noongar author Claire G. Coleman’s third novel,
Enclave, a few
days after the US Supreme Court overturned the
Roe v Wade judgement, a
political victory for a conservative project many years in the making.
As Michael Bradley argues in his recent article in
Crikey, those driving this
project “want to live in the America of their small imaginations: white,
straight, patriarchal, Christian and mean”.
Such small imaginations also inhabit the world of
Enclave. Divided into two
parts, the novel opens in a dystopian society just enough like our own to be
disconcerting.
The third-person narrative is told from the perspective of Christine, who is
soon to turn 21. She has recently completed her undergraduate degree and is
about to enrol in a Masters of Pure Mathematics. She has grown up in a walled
town ruled by a Chairman and controlled by an Agency full of identity-less men
in charcoal suits, backed up by security forces. People are led to believe that
the widespread camera surveillance and armies of drones keep them safe.
The world is hotter than our own, so everyone lives indoors in
temperature-controlled environments. Opening a window in your own home is
enough to alert the security forces. Light does not illuminate – it sneaks up,
heats up, blinds and glares. It is violent and ugly bright, not unlike the
“blank and pitiless” gaze from W.B. Yeats’ poem
The Second Coming."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
