Nicola Barkerâs readers are primed to expect surprises, but her tenth novel delivers mind-meld on a metaphysical scale. From quiet beginnings in the picturesque English seaside enclave of Pett Level, âIn The Approachesâ ultimately constructs its own anarchic city-state on the previously undiscovered common ground between G.K. Chesterton and Philip K. Dick. On the one hand, this is an old-fashioned romantic comedy of fused buttocks, shrunken heads and Irish-Aboriginal saints; on the other itâs Barkerâs wildest and most haunting book since 2007âs Booker Prize-shortlisted âDarkmansâ.
Following previous celebrations of the enduring allure of the posted letter (âBurley Cross Postbox Theftâ) and the pre-lapsarian innocence of pre-Twitter celebrity (Booker-longlisted âThe Yipsâ), this concluding instalment of Barkerâs subliminally affiliated âdigital trilogyâ imagines a basis for the internet in Catholic theology. Set in a 1984 which seems almost as distantly located in the past as Orwellâs was in the future, âIn the Approachesâ offers a captivating glimpse of something more shocking than any dystopia â the possibility of faith.