Elixium is a pleasantly challenging novel that makes good use of an unreliable narrator.
I didn’t really understand 100% but that’s okay. I didn’t understand Gravity’s Rainbow either, but large parts of it were amazing. I finished it feeling that if I read it again I would have a different take on the events. From this I deduce that it’s lit fic, but it’s not any kind of lit fic I’ve read previously, in that this one is frighteningly grounded in reality and the story is as compelling as a straight thriller.
The early menacing tone reminded me of the Gingerbread House fairy story. Except, for Gingerbread, read drugs. Imagine a psychedelic as powerful as DMT but administered via an eye drop: Metanox. I would not be at all surprised if one day a drug like Metanox exists. Perhaps it already does. It became evident the author is an expert on fungi:
Reuben smiled. “Please tell me about the tincture.”
The Brahmin told him that a tribe produced the tincture by crushing the flesh of a sacred fungus which fed off moss on the rainforest floor, gradually transforming from a sporadic collection of hair-like mycelia to a bright yellow mushroom.
According to the Brahmin, a fruiting body burst through the rainforest floor only once every hundred years. “One must wait patiently,” said the Brahmin. “As in all of life’s most precious endeavours.”
Reuben licked his lips. “Where can I find this mushroom?”
I noticed echoes of ‘O Lucky Man’ when Tom, one of the main characters, was told that the Chief Constable is in Elixium’s pocket, and when Tom is offered a job in Elixium it reminded me of when a nobody becomes World President in PK Dick’s ‘Solar Lottery’.
In most novels the reader is ‘expected’ to identify with one main character throughout the story, but here, the viewpoint shifts, and so does our judgement of the characters in a subtle but startling way. The boundaries between normal and crazed become blurred when those around you are the crazed.
Elixium begins as lit fic and morphs into a thriller. Complete with a twist at the end. And speaking of the ending, I came away from this novel well satisfied.
Condensed read: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets Naked Lunch meets Train Spotting. ( )