{"id":146847,"date":"2020-08-13T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=146847"},"modified":"2020-08-13T13:10:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T17:10:30","slug":"a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her column, Re-Covered, Lucy Scholes exhumes the out-of-print and forgotten books that shouldn\u2019t be. This month, she examines an anomalous work,<\/em> They, in Kay Dick\u2019s already anomalous oeuvre.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kay Dick is a name all but forgotten today, but in the midtwentieth century she was at the heart of the London literary scene. A list of the guests regularly entertained by her and her partner, the novelist Kathleen Farrell, at their Hampstead home\u2014they lived together from 1940 to 1962\u2014includes a host of successful and popular writers of the era, including C. P. Snow, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Brigid Brophy, Muriel Spark, Stevie Smith, Olivia Manning, Angus Wilson, and Francis King. I mention them here, because it was the scathing description of Dick\u2019s treatment of her friends, as detailed in her obituary in the Guardian <\/em>in 2001, that first attracted my attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many years,\u201d wrote the writer and journalist Michael De-la-Noy, \u201cthe novelist Kay Dick, who has died aged 86, was at the centre of literary intrigue and gossip.\u201d The claim he then makes\u2014that she \u201cexpended far more energy in pursuing personal vendettas and romantic lesbian friendships than in writing books\u201d\u2014is cutthroat enough to smack of a vendetta all of its own. He describes her as a failed artist, \u201ca talented woman bedeviled by ingratitude and a kind of manic desire to avenge totally imaginary wrongs.\u201d De-lay-Noy\u2019s obituary is less a celebration of Dick\u2019s life and more an all-out character assassination, one that details a litany of grudges maintained, ambitions thwarted, and friendships cruelly smashed to smithereens. Needless to say, I was intrigued enough to immediately hunt down Dick\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

Initially, I was slightly disappointed by what I found. Her first four novels\u2014By the Lake <\/em>(1949), Young Man <\/em>(1951), An Affair of Love <\/em>(1953), and Solitaire <\/em>(1958)\u2014which tell stories of romantic or familial entanglements against the backdrop of refined European settings, were elegant but not especially memorable. Her fifth work, Sunday <\/em>(1962), proved more absorbing, especially in its psychological astuteness. It\u2019s a loosely autobiographical novel about her childhood (Dick was born in England in 1915, but educated in Geneva, then at the Lyc\u00e9e Fran\u00e7aise in London, before leaving home at the age of twenty \u201cto mix with a louche set,\u201d as she later put it in an interview) and her relationship with her glamorous single mother. \u201cShe must have had great courage,\u201d wrote Dick in an autobiographical piece that detailed the story of her birth, \u201cbecause illegitimacy in the First World War was a very unpleasant business to be mixed up with, especially for a woman brought up in a reasonably privileged fashion.\u201d But then, almost out of nowhere, I found myself completely bowled over by Dick\u2019s penultimate novel, They: A Sequence of Unease <\/em>(1977). This disquieting, lean, pared-back dystopian tale, which won the now defunct South-East Arts Literature Prize, is a complete departure from her previous volumes. Reading it was like reading the work of an entirely different writer.<\/p>\n

At less than a hundred pages, They <\/em>is either a novella consisting of nine chapters, or a collection of nine interlinked short stories. The Times<\/em>\u2019s critic Philip Howard opted to describe it as the latter, and I\u2019m inclined to agree, not least because the final episode, \u201cHallo Love,\u201d was originally published as a stand-alone piece two years earlier, in 1975. Set amid the countryside and the beaches of coastal Sussex, They <\/em>depicts a world in which plundering bands of philistines prowl England destroying art, books, sculpture, musical instruments and scores, punishing those artistically and intellectually inclined outliers who refuse to abide by this new mob rule.<\/p>\n

Given that the actions of Ray Bradbury\u2019s book-burning \u201cfiremen\u201d are not dissimilar to that of Dick\u2019s titular unnamed collective marauders, Fahrenheit 451 <\/em>(1953) is an obvious point of comparison. As, of course, is Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em>. Yet in its style and tone, They<\/em> is actually much more reminiscent of the work of experimental British writer Ann Quin (is it just a coincidence, I wondered, that one of Dick\u2019s characters is named \u201cBerg,\u201d the same as the eponymous protagonist of Quin\u2019s 1964 debut?) and Anna Kavan\u2019s enigmatic, almost psychedelic final novel, Ice <\/em>(1967). Kavan\u2019s book, in which a man pursues a silver-haired woman across a snowy, postapocalyptic wasteland, reads like a strange, eerie dream sequence; a description that could also be applied to the unsettling, cryptic episodes of They<\/em>. Kavan\u2019s much mythologized midlife reinvention was brilliantly summarized by Emma Garman on the Daily<\/em><\/a>: \u201cOnce a wholesome young English housewife who wrote conventional women\u2019s fiction, so the story goes, in her thirties she was confined to an insane asylum and emerged as a chic, emaciated bottle-blonde heroin addict, wielding a bleak and anarchic new literary voice,\u201d and it explains the austere nihilism of Ice.<\/em> Quin\u2014whose struggle with mental illness also suffused her work\u2014never modulated her writing voice. They<\/em>, however, is all the more fascinating because it\u2019s a complete anomaly in Dick\u2019s oeuvre: a surreptitious late-career aberration, whose genesis is unclear, and which does not seep into what she writes after.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

It\u2019s apt then that much of the novel\u2019s power lies in its mystery. The narrator\u2014if, indeed, we\u2019re listening to the same single voice throughout\u2014seems to be a writer, who lives in a book-filled ex-coastguard\u2019s cottage, alone apart from their dog. They are never named. Nor is his or her gender revealed, something that\u2019s in line with what Kris Kirk, in an interview with Dick in the Guardian<\/em> in 1984 described as Dick\u2019s \u201candrogynous mental attitude.\u201d Dick had just finished explaining why the \u201coverall tone\u201d of the personal relationships depicted in her books is always bisexual, which is how she herself identified. She also notes that although she\u2019s sexually attracted to both men and women, there\u2019s \u201csomething extra\u201d in her relationships with the latter; \u201cthis love, this emotion,\u201d she clarifies. \u201cI have certain prejudices and one of them is that I cannot bear apartheid of any kind\u2014class, colour or sex,\u201d she tells Kirk. \u201cGender is of no bloody account and if anything drives me round the bend it\u2019s these separatist feminist lessies.\u201d Given that Dick made a habit of loosely fictionalizing her own experiences, I\u2019ve come to think of her protagonist in They<\/em> as female. Even more inscrutable though are the \u201cthey\u201d of the book\u2019s title; \u201comnipresent and elusive,\u201d as Howard describes them, extremely dangerous and violent, but also strangely vacant and automaton-like. \u201cThey\u201d are rarely distinguished as individuals, which situates them in stark contrast to the narrator and her acquaintances.<\/p>\n

In the opening episode, \u201cSome Danger Ahead,\u201d the narrator goes to visit the first of these; a man called Karr and a woman called Claire (perhaps husband and wife, we\u2019re never told). Claire, a painter, is working in her studio, and Karr has an impressive library of books. Walking home later that day, the narrator stops by the village shop. \u201cIt\u2019s the books at Oxford now,\u201d she\u2019s informed, in the manner of the latest gossip being relayed. No explanation follows. All we\u2019re told is that she feigns disinterest in the news. We\u2019re left in the dark as to what\u2019s being discussed, but the narrator herself clearly knows what\u2019s going on. \u201cIt must be possible\u2026\u201d she begins to ask Karr when she returns to his house the following day. \u201cTo be missed?\u201d he finishes the question for her. \u00a0\u201cWe shall all be reached,\u201d he tells her. Later still, when she returns to her cottage, she notices that her copy of Middlemarch <\/em>is missing from her bookshelf. \u201cThey took another book last night,\u201d she tells Claire the next morning.<\/p>\n

A new servant appears at Karr\u2019s house. \u201cThey sent him,\u201d Karr tells the narrator. \u201cThey cleared the National Gallery yesterday,\u201d Claire reports shortly thereafter. Karr, it\u2019s explained, is \u201ctraining\u201d a young boy named Jake (possibly his and Claire\u2019s son, possibly not, Jake\u2019s relationship to the adults is never explained) to remember that which is being destroyed, including scores composed by a man named Garth\u2014who\u2019s in love with Claire\u2014and poems written by the narrator.<\/p>\n

As the days pass, more books disappear from the narrator\u2019s shelves. One evening, the friends sip champagne on Karr\u2019s terrace, looking out over the estuary. When, the group later goes inside, they discover that Karr\u2019s library has been stripped of books and the pictures have been removed from the walls. \u201cClaire stroked the spaces where each painting had hung,\u201d then she tells the others she has one more piece to finish and retires to her studio to work. Later that night, the narrator and Karr watch her being led away by \u201cthem.\u201d What will happen to her, the narrator asks:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will blind her, and return her to me,\u201d Karr said. \u201cShe went beyond the accepted limit. She continued to paint.\u201d
\nGarth raced after them.
\n\u201cAnd to him?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cThey will make him deaf,\u201d Karr said.
\n\u201cAnd to me, if?\u201d I was ice all over.
\n\u201cThey would amputate your hands and cut out your tongue,\u201d Karr said. \u201cYou\u2019d better destroy the letters you\u2019ve written. One must not leave them any possible opening for confrontation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As these vicious acts of retribution are described, a chill just as glacial as that assaulting the narrator descends over the reader. Later we learn that as well as corporal punishment, psychological torture is also employed. Those who resist are taken to treatment centers housed in tall, imposing, jail-like towers, where they\u2019re purged of their memories and emotions.<\/p>\n

One element that makes the book especially disturbing is that \u201cthey,\u201d whoever they are, are not a government-sanctioned group like Bradbury\u2019s firemen or Orwell\u2019s all-pervading government surveillance, but rather an unsanctioned multitude, the strength of which appears to lie not in official mandates, but rather in the swell of their ever-increasing numbers. \u201cLoners,\u201d as \u201cthey\u201d refer to the narrator and her kind, are more at risk than couples or families\u2014\u201cNone-conformity is an illness. We\u2019re possible sources of contagion,\u201d another character explains. Television, for example, is compulsory. In a later episode, great bands of \u201cthem\u201d march across the downs, \u201ceach one holding a pole to match his height.\u201d Disinterest is the narrator and her friend Julian\u2019s only defense. \u201cDon\u2019t look back,\u201d he tells her. \u201cWe must not appear inquisitive.\u201d So, too, excessive displays of emotion are forbidden. Love itself has been outlawed. In the final story, the narrator is \u201cpermitted\u201d a fortnight of expressing pain after she falls and sprains her ankle: \u201cI allowed myself the luxury of going utterly to pieces for forty-eight hours, moving like one demented through the hours, flooding my mind with old memories, metaphorically wailing at the wall of my loss.\u201d She wonders what other injury she might inflict upon herself so as to be allowed similar \u201crelief\u201d in the future. It\u2019s chilling, but compellingly so. All the more so because of the seamless way in which Dick stitches together what\u2019s an evocatively drawn portrait of otherwise idyllic rural England with this shadow landscape of fear and violence. As Howard concludes in his review, They <\/em>is \u201cstrong stuff, beautifully written, to make a man look behind him in fear and dread when walking down a leafy lane.\u201d<\/p>\n

The episodes described thus far read as windows onto a broader, single narrative of \u201cwe\u201d\u2014the narrator and her various cultured, artistic friends\u2014versus \u201cthem.\u201d Others, however, while set in the same milieu, have the feel of stand-alone tableaux, ending, as they do, on cliff edges of horror. The most arresting of these is \u201cPocket of Quietude,\u201d in which the narrator travels to visit a man called Hurst who lives in a mill full of his artist son\u2019s paintings, though the son himself is ominously absent. Two more refugees arrive, Russell and Jane\u2014he plays the piano, and she\u2019s a poet, though she\u2019s recently had to learn to write with her left hand, her right having been badly burned, held over an open fire for eight minutes while \u201cthey\u201d destroyed her work in the flames below. The mill initially seems like a safe haven, but underneath the surface, dark forces are at work. Hurst is a man \u201cenriching\u201d his \u201ctomb\u201d; he adds to his treasure trove, but in doing so he has to sacrifice those who bring him their work.<\/p>\n

There are many ways to read the book: as a straightforward Orwellian dystopia, a sequence of vividly drawn nightmares, or, if we\u2019re to believe De-la-Noy\u2019s portrait of a writer who never fulfilled her potential, perhaps even as a metaphor for artistic struggle.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

De-la-Noy\u2019s obituary is ruthless, but a more equitable, less hyperbolic appraisal of Dick\u2019s life and work reveals an utterly beguiling woman, one whom, although undoubtedly spiky, actually produced a large body of important work while also living an extremely full, free life in the company of many dear friends. Pierrot<\/em> (1960), for example, Dick\u2019s study of the commedia dell\u2019arte is considered something of a definitive work on the subject. Then, during the fifteen-year gap between Sunday <\/em>(1962) and They <\/em>(1977), she published two absorbing volumes of literary interviews: Ivy and Stevie <\/em>(1971), and Friends and Friendship <\/em>(1974). Writing in the Times <\/em>in 1974, A. S. Byatt declared that the former \u201cwould always be required reading\u201d for anyone interested in either of its subjects, Ivy Compton-Burnett and Stevie Smith. Dick\u2019s obituary in the same newspaper attributed her success as an interlocutor to the fact that she was a woman of \u201csympathy and perception,\u201d one who\u2019d \u201cpersuaded two naturally reticent women writers [\u2026] to reveal more about their inner lives than they had ever done to anyone, except obliquely through their writings.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the forties and fifties, we see in Dick a writer learning her craft. During this time she also worked in bookselling and publishing: aged only twenty-six, she became the first woman director in English publishing, at P. S. King & Son, and later she was the editor of The Windmill<\/em> (under the pen name Edward Lane), a short-lived but acclaimed literary periodical. But it\u2019s in the latter half of her career that she comes into her own as a writer. The flashes of brilliance found in Sunday<\/em> are a more permanent fixture in her subsequent autobiographically inspired project, The Shelf <\/em>(1984), the novel that followed They<\/em>, and the final book Dick published. The Shelf <\/em>is intriguing enough that I toyed with making it the subject of this column, before They <\/em>won out. Written as a letter to her intimate friend Francis (presumably Francis King) it relates the story of a brief sexual affair Dick had with a married woman in the mid-\u201960s, not long after the breakdown of her relationship with Farrell. With its echoes of Jean Rhys\u2019s stories of unhappy love affairs, what begins as a \u201cwonderfully wanton adventure\u201d swiftly turns into a tragedy when the narrator\u2019s lover commits suicide. As Elaine Feinstein wrote in the Times<\/em>, this \u201cshort, fierce, intelligent novel is as subtly accurate about the aphrodisiac effects of Lesbian love as it is about the pain of loss: and forgetting: and the fear of death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think,\u201d Dick as her narrator, Cass, movingly writes, \u201cthat it is right and renewing to remember acts of love because, in the relative brevity of our lives, there is not time enough for loving. Until I brought myself back to recall that exuberant pleasure, I had almost forgotten about it, placed it, as I said, on the shelf, somewhere in my memory. One should be less mean with one\u2019s memory of love, bring it out now and then, let it glow inside one as a positive element of our experiences to be cherished and to be grateful for. It is all too easy in troubled and preoccupied times to forget the blessings.\u201d This spoke to me, that final line in particular, in our own troubled contemporary times. And here, as in moments in They<\/em>\u2014\u201cKarr and I sat in the library, which was also a way of loving\u201d\u2014Dick shows herself to be a masterful writer, both more candid and more compassionate than De-la-Noy appreciated. Like any strong allegory,<\/em> They<\/em> can be read many ways, but is perhaps best, and most accurately, read as a plea for individual and intellectual freedoms by a woman artist who refused to refused to live by many of society\u2019s rules. As Dick writes in Friends and Friendship<\/em>, \u201cit is an extremely courageous act to be a writer, painter, composer, because you are out on your own, in limbo, totally unprotected, not much encouraged, driven only by some inner conviction and strength, and the discipline is yours alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read earlier installments of Re-Covered here<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Lucy Scholes is a critic who lives in London. She writes for the\u00a0<\/em>NYR Daily,<\/em>\u00a0The Financial Times,<\/em>\u00a0The New York Times Book Review,\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Literary Hub, among other publications.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This lean, disquieting novel, now out-of-print, is reminiscent of the work of Ann Quin and Anna Kavan\u2019s \u201cIce.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46439],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-re-covered"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Lost Dystopian Masterpiece by Lucy Scholes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This lean, disquieting novel, now out-of-print, is reminiscent of the work of Ann Quin and Anna Kavan\u2019s \u201cIce.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece by Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 13, 2020 \u2013 This lean, disquieting novel, now out-of-print, is reminiscent of the work of Ann Quin and Anna Kavan\u2019s \u201cIce.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-08-13T15:28:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-08-13T17:10:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"975\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lucy Scholes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"14 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lucy Scholes\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc\"},\"headline\":\"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-13T15:28:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-13T17:10:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/\"},\"wordCount\":2837,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Re-Covered\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/\",\"name\":\"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece by Lucy Scholes\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-13T15:28:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-08-13T17:10:30+00:00\",\"description\":\"This lean, disquieting novel, now out-of-print, is reminiscent of the work of Ann Quin and Anna Kavan\u2019s \u201cIce.\u201d\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc\",\"name\":\"Lucy Scholes\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Lucy Scholes\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lscholes\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece by Lucy Scholes","description":"This lean, disquieting novel, now out-of-print, is reminiscent of the work of Ann Quin and Anna Kavan\u2019s \u201cIce.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece by Lucy Scholes","og_description":"August 13, 2020 \u2013 This lean, disquieting novel, now out-of-print, is reminiscent of the work of Ann Quin and Anna Kavan\u2019s \u201cIce.\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2020-08-13T15:28:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-08-13T17:10:30+00:00","og_image":[{"width":975,"height":600,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Lucy Scholes","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Lucy Scholes","Est. reading time":"14 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/"},"author":{"name":"Lucy Scholes","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc"},"headline":"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece","datePublished":"2020-08-13T15:28:00+00:00","dateModified":"2020-08-13T17:10:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/"},"wordCount":2837,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg","articleSection":["Re-Covered"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/","name":"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece by Lucy Scholes","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg","datePublished":"2020-08-13T15:28:00+00:00","dateModified":"2020-08-13T17:10:30+00:00","description":"This lean, disquieting novel, now out-of-print, is reminiscent of the work of Ann Quin and Anna Kavan\u2019s \u201cIce.\u201d","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kaydick.jpeg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/13\/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Lost Dystopian Masterpiece"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f7d002776d4d7c0fdb6961eddb06dabc","name":"Lucy Scholes","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8fcb3b549485201ecf60f90fa5811784c042b8229af2de0c3d0ae1842eac9eff?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Lucy Scholes"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lscholes\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146847"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146867,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146847\/revisions\/146867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}