2023/153: Prophet — Helen McDonald and Sin Blaché

...just like fluoride in water protects a nation’s teeth, Prophet in water protects a nation’s idea of itself... [loc. 6139]

An American diner has appeared in a Suffolk field. It's a pitch-perfect rendition, with the neon and the jukebox: but it's not connected to any electricity supply. It's something like a memory, but not quite. To investigate this, the US military brings in an odd couple: Sunil Rao, British-Asian, ex-MI6, ex-Sothebys, who has an inexplicable sense of truth so strong and so infallible that he can zero in on a fact by asking himself questions about it; and Lt-Col Adam Rubenstein, impassive and unscrutable, the only person whose lies Rao can't detect. The two have worked together before, but there are elements to their collaboration that Rao, at least, isn't aware of. And between them they begin to discover the nature of the substance called Prophet, manufactured by an American pharma company, which -- at least initially -- allows those who are dosed with it to reify their fondest memories: for instance, that diner, created by a local fellow who's into Americana.

Nostalgia, which was regarded as a psychological disorder when it was first identified and named, is now generally thought of as a twee but harmless affection for the past: here, though, it's weaponised, and Prophet, the means by which memories become objects, is poorly understood by its creators. It's up to Rao and Rubenstein to make sense of the drug and the implications of its existence, even as its nature changes and changes again. Add to this an apparently one-sided attraction between them (Rao is a promiscuous, manic bisexual, and he hypothesises that 'whatever sexuality Adam possesses has been entirely sublimated into government-sponsored violence') and the two men's personalities and histories weave into an ever more complex web of meaning, emotion and deception.

I liked this a great deal, though I think I had been expecting something ... other, given Macdonald's solitary, rural, grief-laden H is for Hawk. I was aware, going in, that the two authors had co-written Prophet during the pandemic, and that some reviewers were comparing it to fanfiction. As someone who has co-written before, and misses it, I was especially intrigued by the collaborative aspect of the novel: as with all good collaboration, the joins are imperceptible. If there are issues, it's the uneven pacing and perhaps the skewed imbalance between backstories: we get a lot about Adam's past, but rather less about Sunil's. On the other hand, most of the narrative focusses on Sunil Rao: he is the agent of change.

The romance works; the techno-thriller more or less works; I like the protagonists (and their banter, and their very distinct voices) a great deal; I found some of the Prophet-objects, such as the dog, truly horrific; and I hope that Blaché and Macdonald collaborate again.

'Our subject, in Prophet, is the literal weaponisation of nostalgia.' -- great article by the authors on how and why this is 'Barbie meets Oppenheimer'.