"Universality" by Natasha Brown

An audio book.

There's an article written by Hannah about an event followed by some chapters about the key characters, where some details differ with those of the article. Richard Spenser works in London in the finance sector. He's separated from wife Clare and child. When his father died he bought a Yorkshire farm, getting Jake to run it. During lockdown squatters moved in. Jake hit the leader Pegasus with a gold ingot and went off with it.

Lenny (female) is a right-wing influencer - actually Jake's mother. She and Richard were the only ones left in their apartment block during lockdown. They'd had sex.

Hannah is with Martin, Gwen with John. They have an evening meal together, discussing algorithms, class, race, etc. Hannah has interviewed Lenny. Martin intends to. The farm incident is being dramatised - Jake will be black and his mother will be Spenser's housekeeper. Richard has formally complained about how Hannah has portrayed him.

Years before, when Richard's father was widowered and his construction business was struggling, Richard helped at the expense of being with Clare. He didn't want Clare's rich parents to bail them out.

Lenny's 2nd book, "Woke Capitalism", wasn't a simple follow-up to her first.

Can't see too much in it. You can't believe all you read it the papers.

Other reviews

• Alex Clarke (a fabulous fable about the politics of storytelling)
• readingwritingandme (The book takes risks in its unconventionality. Thirty-five percent of the novel is the feature itself which we're launched into without context, and it offers the majority of the story as it bounces between various players in the dramatic incident. There are times where I felt this dragged, and I wondered what the point would be in the wider novel. It turns out that this feature is largely the novel. What disappointed me, somewhat, was that the central focus of the feature, the anarchist group that was turning cult-like and the interpersonal problems that led to the assault, were all put entirely to the wayside when the book shifted course. Which, it does make sense for the project. The book is really a critique of the media ecosystem as a whole more than anything. And, in that way, Brown makes her artificial device almost too compelling because I found myself wanting to go deeper on the content of the piece itself rather than look at the machinations around it. This perfectly makes the point Brown is going for, but I feel like it's worth saying on the plane of novels being entertainment and having the dimension of reader experience that there is something of a letdown in that choice. The prose sections after the feature also felt technically weaker.)
• ontheprize (Crucially, the novel reveals that far from the purely political and contemporarily ‘symbolic’ crime that Hannah sets up in the article, there are far more personal motivations at play behind the scenes. ... It’s a book that his received fulsome praise from many quarters, with many a five star review and plaudits from respected sources and prizes aplenty. I have to confess that my immediate reaction to all of this was utter bemusement. ... The first third ... is lumberingly written, and didn’t grab my attention at all. Of course, this is soon revealed to have been something like “the point” ... My primary criticism is that the rest of the book, even as its structural ‘cleverness’ becomes apparent, lacks redeeming features ... Beyond that, what else is there? The characters are caricatures in service of the cleverness. It’s implied that the later sections of the book reveal hidden depths beyond the superficiality of the article, but do they really? ... I get the point (and did while reading) that Brown is deconstructing the simplistic narratives we are fed in the modern, highly polarised ‘Culture Wars’ landscape, and massively agree that this is a worthwhile endeavour. But isn’t it preaching to the converted? Don’t most readers of this kind of literary fiction understand inherently the false dichotomies being established and understand that the characters espousing them are often deeply compromised individuals with ties to the things they criticise and that their motivations aren’t exactly honourable? No?)