They

This was really interesting. It's really just a bunch of scenes in our narrator's life in this “dystopian” England, rather than a cohesive story. There's an uncomfortable undercurrent to the whole, but hope as well.

We don't really know our narrator, don't know if they're a man or a woman, but it doesn't ultimately matter, but we know they write and love books and their friends. The friends are artists of various sorts. And who They are isn't clear either. They want conformity and don't want all the art. But who and why, we don't know.

I wish we had a bit more context for what was going on - it was a little too sparse in some ways - but there's something interesting in being able to come up with your own ideas about what's going on here. For such a sparse book there's a lot to consider. (The writing is gorgeous, too, which helps.)

Because of the way I read this (audiobook along with the text) I got a foreword by Carmen Maria Machado and an afterword by Lucy Scholes. There's some overlap in what they talk about, but both have insights the other doesn't mention. You can't go wrong with either version I think. I'm so glad McNally Editions is publishing “lost” books like this.