FICTION

The Facility

by Simon Lelic
Penguin. 2012. c.352p. ISBN 9780143120681. pap. $15. F
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London dentist Arthur Priestley abruptly disappears. His abduction, however, has been inadvertently recorded. Julia, Priestley's estranged wife, presents the video to Tom Clarke, a progressive journalist with a reputation for blowing the lid off government scandals. Armed with this evidence and suspicions raised after a disastrous press conference during which government leaders announce the establishment of a hidden facility designed to quarantine British citizens infected with an unnamed disease, Julia and Tom attempt to find this mysterious institution. If they can find the facility, they believe they will find Priestley. Their quest for truth thrusts Julia and Tom into a world of government-sponsored violence and corporate media cover-ups.
VERDICT Fans of Saramago's Blindness will be blown away by this a chilling election-year fable for our current era of universal surveillance and corporate control of media and its perverse influence on politics. Lelic's prose is lean and cinematic and brilliantly conveys his characters' justified paranoia. His lastest (after The Child Who) reads like the classic post-war British fiction of Margaret Atwood, Anthony Burgess, and William Golding.
Reviewed by J. Greg. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs. , Nov 15, 2012
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