Natasha Brown doesn’t like to talk about her private life. Where did she grow up? “In London”, she replies tersely. In the north, more privileged, or in the south, where she was once more humble? “I do not answer. I have lived in many places.” What did her parents do? “I’m not talking about them.” And what did her work in the world of finance consist of, which has inspired her acclaimed debut, Meeting (Anagram)? “I’m not talking about that either,” she insists with her most unbreachable smile, sitting on the terrace of a Barcelona hotel with views of La Pedrera, whose rough façade has left her between fascinated and astonished.
Deep down, in his persistent secrecy there could be more coherence than acrimony. After the scare, we will understand that the protagonist of her novel, the latest sensation in British literature and already translated into 15 languages, is wrapped in the same biographical fog. We will know very little about this narrator: that she went to a prestigious university — like Brown, who studied Mathematics at Cambridge — and that she got a job in the City — just like the author, who spent a decade in a company whose name she does not want to remember either. —. That she leaves her with a posh lefty who has invited her to a family party in a mansion in the English countryside. And that she has it all, even if she doesn’t feel like a winner at the late capitalism awards ceremony. She has no name, she has no age, and she has no face. She has neither opinions nor desires nor much appetite for life, lobotomized as she is by a very open and multicultural society, but eaten away by the invisible heritage of colonialism. We almost forgot to mention that this narrator is black and the daughter of immigrants.
The book recounts two days in the life of that woman—one more than Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf—, faced with a lousy medical diagnosis against which she wonders if it is worth fighting, in a somewhat choppy interior monologue, like a cross between the experiments of the avant-garde and the licenses of the postmodern novel. Brown seems to return to the Victorian works that he devoured in his adolescence and expose their ugly skeleton: the dissection of brutal class differences and the alienating dissociation experienced by turncoats trying to get ahead, almost a British equivalent to “double consciousness”. which WEB Du Bois spoke of. It is a short and poignant volume, barely 150 pages long, which aroused some criticism in his country. Brown was reproached for making a literature designed for millennials with attention spans damaged by their overexposure to social media. “It is a curious criticism: nobody believes that a large painting is better than a small one, but we continue to apply that criterion to books,” defends the author. “I suspect it’s just a business thing: it’s about making the reader feel like the money was well spent. But I don’t think those business concerns should dictate the length of a book.”
“No one believes that a large painting is better than a small one, but we continue to apply that criterion to books”
Brown conceived it as if it were a theatrical monologue, not only because of its duration —a couple of hours are enough to finish it—, but also because of its poetic language, in which images take precedence over the notion of plot. He was inspired by works like poshby Laura Wade —which would lead to the film The Riot Club in 2014—, or fleabag, the monologue that spawned the celebrated Phoebe Waller-Bridge series. He wrinkles his rictus, however, if two other references are mentioned to him. First, Industry, a recent series about a handful of young puppies in London’s financial sector. “I haven’t seen it, but some plot points didn’t make sense,” she replies. And then, I could destroy you, Michaela Coel’s autofiction inspired by her rape. “It’s a fantastic show, but I suspect if we weren’t the same race, no one would ask me that question…” The ninth, also on the forehead.
We will protest politely. Don’t they both speak of the affliction caused by the subaltern position that a black woman occupies by default in a post-colonial society like the British one, no matter how integrated and successful her career has been? “There are readers who tell me that, but I don’t see that kind of grief in the book. It’s interesting that when a person looks like me, everything they say becomes political. I could say that today is a great day and they would answer me that it is a militant statement, ”says Brown. The argument becomes inconceivable when one reaches the last section of the book, which openly charges against the great injustices of the integration model. “In the best of cases, their children grow up, assimilate, get jobs and give money to a government that will tell them, over and over again, that they are not British,” writes Brown, who said he was also inspired by such political authors as bell hooks, who appears quoted in the text, or Claudia Rankine, author of the lyrical essay Citizen. “Yeah, but I meant it in stylistic terms,” she dodges again. “I understand the desire others have to politicize me, but I think doing that would hurt my job.”
Brown is preparing a second book “very different in setting and style,” but warns that she will not be a novelist for the rest of her life. “I’m just taking a break from finances, but I plan to come back,” the author announces. In fact, she believes that she is unfairly demonized in popular culture. “No industry is perfect. Ugly things happen everywhere. It’s something I’ve learned from meeting people who work in other industries.” For example, the publisher? Once again, Ella Brown will not respond. She will prefer another of her smiles, even if this one is much more malicious.
‘Meeting’. Natasha Brown. Translation by Inga Pellisa. Anagram, 2022. 144 pages. €17.90.
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