⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Our story today starts in the morning light of New Year’s Day. The night before we’d walked for hours after watching the fireworks on the Thames and now my best friend and I are wandering, rather more stiffly, around the Charing Cross Road Foyles. To cut what would be a meandering story short, my friend bought me this book, I read it on Monday and I’m still thinking about it on Friday.
The book itself is split into nine chapters, each about a different cast of characters in a different situation, told by a nameless narrator. This narrator tells the story in the first person which gives us the opportunity to feel and spectate alongside them. They are without any identifying traits: they’ve no name, no gender, no race, no interests or hobbies; they could truly be anyone.
The book seems to all be set in the same stretch of coast so we can sort of see time passing because They grow more powerful and terrifying as the book progresses. They start as a shadow sneaking around and stealing books, then at the end of the first story they blind a painter and deafen a musician but return them home after as they are no longer threats. However, as we travel through the book things get worse. The mob grows larger and bolder, and people end up in re-education centres designed to scrub them clean and return them empty.
Still They grow more powerful. Children start becoming monsters murdering kittens and gouging their eyes out, and the punishments for artists and individuals get worse as we move from blinding to execution.
The eerie way that time passes in the same stretch of land shows us how people are erased as no characters cross across stories, unless they are/become a narrator but we’d never know.
We only see the mob itself in the penultimate chapter. They urinate publicly, destroy things, litter, incite violence and hatred, censor, commit animal cruelty and treachery, erase love and identity, and this all started with the relatively innocuous, if slightly sinister, taking away of art.
I think ‘Pocket of Quietude’ was my favourite but it was heartbreaking. The idea that there is a sanctuary for artists to live and create and be free, but it’s all a trap, yet they go there willingly knowing this, is devastating. They go because at least they’ll have like three days where it’s as if They don’t exist and they can pretend everything is normal and perfect right up until they’re arrested in the middle of the night. Even this they foresee. It’s a drug haze before the knife falls but they’re in it together. All that is ever left is Hurst, the man who owns the mill who collects the pieces of art left by those he sacrifices for his own survival.
Another chapter I want to draw attention to is ‘Pebble of Unease’ because it STRESSED me out. Nothing bad actually happens but the threat of it is there the entire time. The lines of the mob who close ranks and draw ever closer as the narrator and their friend return home from an ill-advised walk made me the most nervous I have been while reading in a while. It was a simple story, and relatively tame compared to the others in the book, but I think that this, for me, was the point where I became aware of the terrifying power this faceless gang has.
It’s also interesting to note the way that the stories seem so dream-like and idyllic when they open with beautiful descriptions of the natural world and the weather as if in a fairytale. Soon, however, a distinct threat appears, especially as the book continues and you become more familiar with the threat They pose. You start to be anxious as soon as a new story starts, as people being happy together and enjoying an activity suddenly fills you with dread and worry
There was a quote I came across while reading it that I thought encapsulated the ideas of the book well:
“He had thought to hide under the huge bell when they came to take him away. A few rungs from the top he slipped. Tessa was the first to reach his body. He was a poet who wrote about the need for love.”
“They”, Kay Dick, p99
The quote is about a poet whose art was the pursuit of love who died falling to his death in front of the love of his life as he attempted to flee from the mob sent to silence him.
Throughout ‘They’ we see art being censored and then erased, and later we see people being reprogrammed into empty shells devoid of thoughts or feelings, and this brief description of the death of an artist and lover somehow cuts right to the heart of it all. He died for love, for art, and from fear. He was forced up that ladder because what he dreamt of was dangerous, and in the end it killed him. Can you imagine a world where it is so dangerous to speak of love that you risk death to do so? It should not be brave to love, yet here we have been shown how scary it can be and, if we’re being honest with ourselves, how scary it is for many today.
It would be easy to compare this to ‘1984’ but honestly, I enjoyed this more. I found it more sinister and far less boring, so hey, give it a go if you’re seeking dystopian thrills.
