God this is a tricky one!
There was so much I enjoyed about this but also so much that drove me mad. The latter, I think, was sort of the point, but this stuff irked me a little too much for me to honestly say I enjoyed reading this. And though this may seem quite early on in a review to make a conclusion, I have decided that I like Shukla, but that this might not be the book for me.
But enough of the end, let’s do the firstly-firsts. Here’s the blurb:
Kitab Balasubramanyam has had a rough few months. His girlfriend left him. He got fired from the job he hated for writing a novel on company time, but the novel didn’t sell and now he’s burning through his mum’s life insurance money. His father has more success with women than he does, and his Facebook comments get more likes. Kitab is reduced to spending all of his time in his flat with his brother Aziz, coming up with ideas for novelty Tumblrs and composing amusing tweets. But now even Aziz has left him, traveling to America to find his doppelganger.
So what happens when Kitab Balasubramanyam’s only internet namesake turns up on his doorstep and insists that they are meant to be friends?
I was drawn to this by comparisons to Catcher in The Rye, its themes of loneliness and our ever apparent disconnection to the real or “meatspace”.
I had to look up what meatspace meant as it wasn’t a term I had ever come across before. “Meatspace” refers to the real world, real people, those lesser-spotted outside things like pavements and bin collections and birds and farms, everything that happens beyond screens and pixels.
HOW IS THERE A WORD FOR THAT?!
I can only blog this review having eventually dislodged from my keyboard the final lumps of sick and tears that flung themselves out of me when I hit “search” on Google. Now that I can finally type this, I want to say that if this book did one thing for me it was to make me extremely proud of myself for living a life where the word’s defined horror hadn’t made an impression on me, and that I am busy and happy enough offline to not have needed the use of such a word, or my sadness encrusted computer.
And that is basically the bones of this book, that we live in an era where a word like “meatspace” actually has the audacity to exist. It takes an unflinching and very meaty eyeball to our online behavior. If I hadn’t already got rid of my personal Facebook account this book would have had me clicking delete with a hammer. A hammer that was on fire. And made out of a truck.
But as acute as Shukla’s examination is, I found it exhausting to read: Page after page spattered with the grotesque, narcissistic language and behavior that led me to reduce my social media band in the first place, and what clearly irked Shukla enough to write this sucker punch book.
It is a relentless, online onslaught – a documentation of all those dirty, wasted days on social media, trying desperately to confirm and define your existence with pithy comments and out doing yesterday’s retweet count.
I know I should have been laughing, but I spent most of my reading experience rolling my eyes the same way I do at the bilge that some people tweet and the horrifically contrived conversations I overhear in Starbucks.
It made me want to live in the woods.
I found the characters loathsome – I know, I wasn’t meant to find them aspirational – but about a quarter of the way through I was convinced I couldn’t spend anymore time with them. It was Nathan Barley all over again: “all these people are cocks and bastards, but I can’t stop watching”. It got so bad at points that I couldn’t read the book in bed, so convinced was I that these nightmare creatures would pour into my dreams. I instead went back to reading Under The Dome – it tells you all you need to know that by bedtime I craved reading about being cut off from the rest of the world entirely.
It is a testament to Shukla’s writing then, that I was able to find enough heart and soul to keep reading. And there is a lot here to enjoy.
The introduction of Kitab 2 was a brilliantly simple device, and with him Shukla was able to take a scalpel to today’s notions of identity and the often shallow ways we choose to define ourselves in this era. Though I may not agree with the Salinger comparison, I will agree with some other reviewers that it is very funny at times, even if my mirth displayed itself in worried, gritted strains rather than erupting LOLs.
But, back to one more downer – the ending really didn’t do it for me, I will admit that I didn’t see it coming, but I read this hot off the heels of another book that used the exact same reveal (it’s an oldie) so it left me a little deflated and disappointed.
Shukla has clearly had enough of the bollocks we surround ourselves with and, even though this book felt like being dipped into the rumbling belly of the beast, it was refreshing to hear a voice asking if we perhaps are becoming a bit of a shitty and lost generation.
So, if like me you want to find ways to reduce your time hacking away at a keyboard for the benefit of strangers, there is no better way to join Team Meatspace than logging off for a few days to read a book instead.
The hilarious and rather bizarrely charming trailer:
Book info:
- ISBN: 9780007565085
- Published by HarperCollins, The Friday Project
- Sent proof through Netgalley
