If you want freaky insights into the human psyche, you can't do much better than Will Self
The UK’s Will Self is one of my favorite authors and an ideal place to start for newbies is his best-of short story 2010 collection The Undivided Self. (I previously reviewed the first two entries from it: “The Rock of Crack as Big as The Ritz” and “Flytopia.”)
After a long break, I’ve returned to the book and “Caring, Sharing” was next up. The story continues the string of must-read fiction from Self, who perhaps fittingly reminds me of the movie Trainspotting every time I see that unique face of his.
(Short stories are, of course, a great way to test the waters with any fiction writer. So I recommend starting here, but if you already like the brilliant premises Self consistently puts forth—and if you’re a fan of monkeys or even better yet all things Planet of the Apes, like me—then by all means plummet headlong into my favorite novel of his, Great Apes, which I ranked in 2014 as my 35th-favorite novel of all time. That book explores animal rights and other issues when a man and his girlfriend wake after a night of debauchery to find they have both somehow become chimpanzees.)
Meanwhile, the short story at hand explores what a post-sexual work could look like. Two humans (or “grown-ups”) have each taken years to overcome past traumatic dates with other humans and have both settled into comfortable recovery with the help of “emotes”—robot-like creatures three times the size of humans who support them emotionally, help dress them and put them to sleep, and cuddle as needed. Things go about as well as seemingly possible on this date, but even more interesting is what takes place in the shadows with the emotes, who appear to be gaining ground on the humans, to say the least, in terms of who’s more human.
In 1999, the The New York Times gave its critique:
“This deadpan allegory is not startlingly new—science fiction satire experts like Frederik Pohl and Robert Sheckley were delivering similar stuff in the 1950s—but it’s performed with tremendous gusto and a peculiar sweetness.”
5 out of 5 stars
“Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys” is about Bill, a contractor psychiatrist, who is on an epic, drunken, and drugged drive from the northern tip of Scotland all the way down to London to see a female acquaintance named Betty. As Bill’s imagination takes him to an idea of buying a castle to begin a sort-of cult of all his ex-girlfriends, he pulls over in the rain to pick up a hitchhiker named Mark. His dislike of the hitchhiker grows throughout the ride as he asks the passenger all kinds of personal questions, which are dutifully answered, but the hitchhiker puzzlingly never asks any personal questions of Bill. The hate in Bill’s mind climaxes when the hitchhiker tells him he plans to ride Tonka toy trucks in the streets of Glasgow later that night. The title of the story is based on an ad slogan for Tonka, which the hitcher had never heard of before. After Bill drops off the hitchhiker and continues on alone getting nearer to London, his disgust in the neglect Mark had shown in questioning him and also in abandoning his child years before got Bill thinking about his own abandonment of his own son. The ride ends there, and I won’t spoil how. While this story is a bit longer, bordering on a novella, it unfolds pretty slowly but is still a gripping take on how our past can karmically come back to grab us.
4 out of 5 stars
“Default Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo: A Manual” is the oddest and least satisfying of these three stories. Bill Bywater, another psychologist protagonist, is reminded of his mistress Serena’s vulva every time he sees the word Volvo, which is pretty often since that’s the kind of car he drives. The relatively short story seems to be all about the lack of logic that goes into the temptations of adultery and, while an entertaining way to spend about 30 minutes or so, isn’t one of Self’s better ones.
3 out of 5 stars