Helen Macdonald
An idea sparked from their discussions about Zoom, Macdonald, and Blaché’s interesting sci-fi is laced with their own cultural nostalgia.
Readers who are familiar with Helen Macdonald’s precise and wonderful writing about the natural world, including the bestselling memoir of grief H Is for Hawk, will find this book, a trippy, philosophical science-fiction novel with the pacing of a thriller and the pulse of a romance, to be an unusual departure. Macdonald, who, like their co-author and friend Sin Blaché, uses the pronoun they, has described in recent interviews how the book arose from the frustrations of lockdown, when the two of them filled some of their downtime with internet chats about a shared interest in science fiction and their childhood TV and video games. These chats influenced not only the drafting of this novel, but also its plotline.
Prophet begins deep in the Suffolk countryside, near a Nato airbase, where an American diner, replete with jukebox and chrome fittings, appears completely constructed in a field overnight. It glows neon in the dusk, yet it has no power source and no plumbing for its water. Other objects have appeared on the base, with no discernible histories: a bouquet of roses, a cabbage patch doll, a Scrabble box, a child’s bike, and a Pac-Man arcade game. These appearances have coincided with the death of an airman at the base, who was cremated in a fire he started.
The pandemic’s aura has permeated into the engine of this book, which plays with conspiracy and anxiety.
Military intelligence
has reassembled an odd pair of detectives to connect these occurrences. Sunil Rao is a disgraced former Sotheby’s art specialist and MI6 agent with an amazing ability to tell a falsehood from the truth and a fake from the genuine article. Rao has been freed from Pentonville prison for the assignment, and it doesn’t take long for him to realize something is “wrong.” Lieutenant Colonel Adam Rubenstein, a US special forces soldier, is the Cagney to his Lacey. The couple had worked together in Tashkent before Rao was dispatched to Afghanistan to perform as an unwilling human lie detector in interrogations, we learn in a succession of backstory chapters. To begin with, Rubenstein is as self-contained as Rao is anarchic. The research is driven by their banter, which is replete of cultural references – some of which you assume are pulled from the authors’ own personal experiences.
The pandemic environment, with unknown viral strains and remote lab breaches, has also permeated into the engine of this book, which plays with conspiracy and anxiety. The link between the occurrences at the airfield appears to be the unintentional release of a substance known as Prophet, which is part of a covert weapons development. The drug is an unusual type of nerve toxin in that it induces deadly levels of sentimentality in anyone who comes into contact with it. It’s like a Novichok of nostalgia. The cabbage patch doll, diner, and bike are all manifestations of different people’s treasured childhood memories, and once Prophet has caused those objects to materialize, they exert a fatal hold over their unwitting creators, leaving them in trance-like states, unable to comprehend the present.
Rao and Rubenstein,
thankfully, are resistant to this weapon’s druggy time travel abilities. Their investigation leads them to a research center in the Colorado Desert, where things become “more Twilight Zone,” as Rao implies. That same path leads authors Macdonald and Blaché into a freewheeling form of meditation on memory’s enticing comfort blanket and the dangers of living in the past as an escape from a hazardous present and an anxious future. In some ways, both in style and substance, their novel is a delightful homage to all the TV and cinema they plainly enjoyed as kids – anything from The X-Files to the Bourne films – but it also seeks to discover a credible road out of that reanimated past.
The hope for that future is staked on a pair of operators whose cooperation turns into a love tale – one that calls the nature of authenticity into question. Despite the clumsy range of character references they embody, both of them come to life on the paper. By the end, the novel reveals its origins as a welcome distraction for its creators, but there is more than enough going on to tick that box for many readers as well.
Jonathan Cape (£18.99) publishes Prophet by Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché. To help the Guardian and Observer, purchase a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.
… there is a compelling reason not to support the Guardian.
. That is why we publish our journalism for everyone to read, including Pakistanis. If this is you, please keep reading for free.
But if you can, there are three compelling reasons to help us today.
- Our high-quality investigative journalism serves as a check on the rich and powerful, who are getting away with more and more.
- Because we are independent and do not have a billionaire owner pulling the strings, your money directly supports our reporting.
- It is inexpensive and takes less time than reading this message.
With a small or big donation, you can help power the Guardian’s work set up, and you can be confident that you’re making a significant difference every time.
