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Books : Fiction : Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards : Authors A-Z : T : Thomas, Scarlett
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"Bright Young Things wanted for big project. SAE to PO Box 2300 Edinburgh." From the 2,000 men and women who respond to this intriguing ad, six are chosen: Anne, Jamie, Thea, Bryn, Emily and Paul. All are pulled into a bewildering world arranged for them by a stranger of whom they--and we, the readers--know nothing.Best-known for her "Lily Pascale" mysteries--Dead Clever and In Your Face--Scarlett Thomas's new novel takes the genre of suspense and twists it. Part I opens with a series of brief character sketches of the bright young things--all, in one way or another, are discontented, looking for the way out that the advertisement appears to promise. Part II begins with the shock: "Where the hell are we?" "Is this some kind of island?" "Please tell me I'm dreaming". Our heroes have woken up outside the front door of a deserted house. "They were all lying next to each other, like a row of dead bodies". To survive, they must solve the puzzle of why they are here and what the mysterious orchestrator has in store for them.
"Why us?"' asks Emily, proposing a (lengthy) game of Truth or Dare. The suspense of the plot turns on the answer to that question, but it's a suspense that the uneven pacing of this novel finds hard to sustain. Scarlett Thomas concocts a heady mix of sexuality and psychology but, like her characters, the narrative falls short of the ordeal it presents. Sharing the curious emptiness of its protagonists (the more we are told about them, the less convincing they seem), Bright Young Things reads more like a script than a novel--something's missing. --Vicky Lebeau
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Following the success of Dead Clever, this is Scarlett Thomas's second "Lily Pascale" story: A fast-paced murder mystery in the tradition of the amateur female sleuth (Lily is a lecturer in crime fiction at a University somewhere in Devon). Keenly aware of its own fictional conventions-- Lily is a reader, a woman who knows her debt to Edgar Allan Poe and Miss Marple--In Your Face plays suspense against cliché when the worlds of academia, journalism and profiling collide: After receiving a troubled phone call from an old University friend (Jess), Lily becomes embroiled in solving the murder of three young women. An unsuccessful hack, Jess has just published an article on the women--all victims of stalking--for a gossip magazine. On the morning of publication, all three are murdered, Jess disappears and Lily, a somewhat casual but compulsive detective, goes to London. Presenting itself as a puzzle--from the Prologue, in which two boys and a girl are discovered having sex in a posh boarding-school to the killer's narrative spliced with Lily's account of her various London adventures-- In Your Face is dead clever. It is a pleasant piece of escapism, unashamed of its conventions or of the odd surprise. --Vicky Lebeau
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Following the success of Dead Clever, this is Scarlett Thomas's second "Lily Pascale" story: a fast-paced murder mystery in the tradition of the amateur female sleuth (Lily is a lecturer in crime fiction at a University somewhere in Devon). Keenly aware of its own fictional conventions-- Lily is a reader, a woman who knows her debt to Edgar Allan Poe and Miss Marple--In Your Face plays suspense against cliché: the worlds of academia, journalism and profiling collide when, after receiving a troubled 'phone call from an old University friend (Jess), Lily becomes embroiled in solving the murder of three young women. An unsuccessful hack, Jess has just published an article on the women--all victims of stalking--for a gossip magazine. On the morning of publication, all three are murdered, Jess disappears and Lily goes to London, a somewhat casual but compulsive detective. Presenting itself as a puzzle--from the Prologue, in which two boys and girl are discovered having sex in a posh boarding-school, to the killer's narrative spliced with Lily's account of her various London adventures--In Your Face is dead clever: a pleasant piece of escapism, unashamed of its conventions or of the odd surprise. --Vicky Lebeau
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