The Wall.
John Lanchester.
Allen & Unwin. 2019. 288 pp.
ISBN 978 0 571 29872 3.
None of us can talk to our parents. By 'us' I mean my generation, people born after the Change... Everyone knows what the problem is. The diagnosis isn't hard—the diagnosis isn't even controversial. It's guilt: mass guilt, generational guilt. The olds feel they irretrievably fucked up the world, then allowed us to be born into it. You know what? It's true.
Amongst the younger generation, those born in England have to serve two years on the Wall as Defenders. It's like compulsory National Service used to be. Joseph Kavanagh, like every new army recruit, everywhere, begins his two years learning how to hold, clean, look after and fire his weapon; learning about hard discipline; learning to obey orders unquestioningly; and living in harsh conditions with a company of strangers. Each company comprises thirty men and women and is divided into two squads each of which spends, in rotation, two weeks on the Wall, one week away from it and one week training.
Life on the Wall is hard and dangerous. And it is cold:
"You look for metaphors: It'd cold as slate, as diamonds, as the moon. Cold as charity—that's a good one. But your soon realise that the thing about cold is that it isn't a metaphor. It isn't like anything else."
We follow Kavanagh as he adjusts to this new life and makes friends, especially with Hifa, who had puzzled him at first, because he couldn't determine her sex beneath all her layers of clothing.
"Time on the Wall is like treacle," Kavanagh remarks at one point. "You train yourself not to look at the time because it's never, never, ever, as late as you think and hope and long for it to be." He makes concrete poetry about the only constants: "cold:::wind:::sky:::water."
And we learn of the need for constant vigilance. The Others may attack anywhere on the Wall and at any time, day or night, and for each Other who manages to get over the Wall and escape into the country one Defender is put to sea to survive or die as chance decrees.
There are attacks. And John Lanchester's descriptions of the battles are as thrilling and absorbing as the best computer games. There are twists and turns, strategies and betrayals, exercises and the real thing. The pace is fast, the results harrowing. Friends die, Others die, Kavanagh is wounded and awarded a medal but this does not negate the risk of his being put to sea after future battles.
The final chapters lose some of that pace but none of their imaginative power. And the end of the book leaves the reader to ponder what may happen next.
This is a disturbing book. So many of the things which led to the creation of the Wall have already happened in our own world. Walls are being planned and built. Sea levels are rising. Others are already attacking borders. And the potential for us all to become the guilty elders by doing nothing about this is too real to be comfortable. Whether you are climate-change sceptic or not, this book must surely make you pause for thought.
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