Reviewed by Jerry Levy
Long before the advent of the modern version of computers and the internet, media guru Marshall McLuhan appeared to have predicted that when faced with information overload, people become passive and disengaged. Unable to focus very long without being distracted. Or, as Nicholas Carr astutely said in his 2010 and 2025 books The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, and Superbloom, How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, the mass amount of data that comes our way creates a cognitive-type of bottleneck, flooding our lives with fake and often shallow news and misinformation, undermining critical thinking, and succeeding in “making us stupid.”
Nell Harding, a rare-book librarian and the protagonist in Michelle Slater’s novel The Lunatic, seemed to have understood all this: “I want to pare life down,” she says. “See if I can read a book again without sending a thousand texts. I know this seems like an act of lunacy …” Indeed. For, as was indicated in the novel, if she chose to cut herself off from technology and all its associated distractions, she would also “be shutting the door to the modern world.” A world where those same undermining technologies of connection also allow easy and quick access to information that would otherwise have been laborious and expensive to access, provide for the ability to reach out for help when needed, navigate the world via GPS, connect us to family, friends, and colleagues, stream songs and shows that we love, make banking and shopping easy, allow people to work from home, make enormous strides in engineering and medicine via AI…the list is rather endless. So what to do? How to live in a media-obsessed world, one that demands instant recognition of texts and e-mails? This, among a number of other profound dilemmas, forms the basis of The Lunatic.
Perhaps all these issues had been brewing in Nell’s head for quite some time. But the inciting incident, the incident that appears to have kick-started her decision to do something about it, may have been related to the time when she was enjoying a latte and an easy banter with chess players at her favourite café, Café Musil. For it was there that the library’s laptop, which she had borrowed, was stolen. The consequences of the act led the police to accuse Nell of the crime of hacking. It also led her to fully understand (if she didn’t already) that the world is insane and, moreover, unsafe.
How interesting too that the theft took place at Café Musil, where, in the past, one might have seen ardent readers of fine literature, such as Dostoyevsky and Baudelaire. Might the theft have taken place elsewhere, such as Starbucks? Of course, And while the times had changed at Café Musil to the point where there were fewer readers of paperbacks and many more people attached to their computers, it still somehow seemed appropriate that it took place where it did, a café named after Robert Musil (author of the epic 1930s/1940s philosophical novel The Man without Qualities). For it is in that novel that the protagonist, Ulrich, a man without personal convictions, drifts through life, untethered to traditional values. Might such a man be willing to steal? Or how about the murderer Moosbrugger in the same novel? As the narrator in The Lunatic hints: “The Europe of Ulrich and Clarisse was hopelessly decadent, n’est-ce pas?” Undoubtedly, a phrase like this might have been exactly what a reader at the café would have once said (Clarisse being one of the novel’s characters, a musician, and someone who gradually loses her sanity). Or how about the fact that the narrator references Dostoyevsky as a once-possible read at the café? Crime and Punishment, perhaps? Raskolnikov? The latter was a similar man without traditional values, someone who thought nothing of killing an old moneylender, and considered himself above the law. Could it be that the ghosts of such men were lurking around darkened corners of the café, cajoling unsuspecting patrons to steal when the opportunity presented itself? Ha! A wild stretch, of course, fun to contemplate, but again the fact that the theft occurred at a café named Café Musil, seems most apt.
But returning once again to Nell, following the theft of the laptop, something sparked in her, and she now longed for a life without the encumbrance of technology, away from the harried lifestyle foisted on her by New York City where she lived and worked. A life that was more honest and authentic, with a deeper sense of purpose. She knew too that it was up to her alone to find that purpose…no job, no stimulation from the city, no amount of pressure from society or friends would find her solution, only personal choice would. But what exactly did such a dramatic new existence look like? And where to find it? One thing Nell knew for certain was that she had to give up her plum job at the library. In addition, her new existence absolutely had to include Argos, her faithful German shepherd. The two had formed an unshakeable bond ever since she rescued him as a puppy from an abusive situation. A spiritual bond of sorts, one in which they looked out for each other. As Nell says one day while watching him run: “My love for Argos is what Gramps would call agape love— Aristotle’s term for an absolute love not based on any conditions at all.” And as one of her friends observes of the two: “It’s like you guys have your own secret language.”
Gramps. A reference to her much-loved grandfather Waldo. The very one who, upon his passing, bequeathed to Nell his house in the rolling hills of the Berkshires in Northern New England. That was it, her solution – a move away from the plugged-in frenetic city of New York to the bucolic countryside. A start, anyway. And it seemed to be working, for as Nell drove her ancient Volvo toward her destination, she ever so slowly began to eschew technology, as witnessed in the following exchange: ‘“If possible, take a U-turn,” her phone said out loud in a polite female automaton’s voice. “I can take it from here, thank you,” Nell muttered in response, fumbling to press the button that would turn off her guide altogether.’
But, as might be expected, the move was not without complications. For how to survive in the country with no phone (she ditched it into a pond at the base of a waterfall), no e-mail, no modem? Not easily, as it turned out, as Nell initially experienced severe bouts of restlessness without her phone, akin to an addict’s withdrawal.
The Lunatic is replete with interesting discussions and references to a wide-ranging number of topics, including the philosophers and poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, poets Robert Frost and Charles Baudelaire, the Iranian Revolution, Thanksgiving, the Appalachian Trail, wine, delectable food (such as pumpkin soup with carrot and ginger, along with cardamom and almond coffee cake), bees and other pollinators, gardening, personal data mining, immigration, the environment, and many other items. The writing is exquisite and well-wrought, although from time-to-time the reader may find themselves reaching for a dictionary. The story certainly has an existential feel to it as it shines a light on how people can find meaning to one’s life through free will and personal choice. And how anguish can turn into self-discovery. But, as Nell would discover, it all doesn’t come wrapped in a neat little package, but rather through courage (overcoming fear and societal expectations) and asserting one’s autonomy. Carefully perusing the narrative, the reader might see vestiges of the works of literary luminaries (and existential writers) such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. Overall, a thought-provoking and very enjoyable read.
The Lunatic is published by Guernica Editions.
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