Debut makes a big impression
No, the title does not refer to the physical dimensions of this 520-page debut novel. Biggerers are the humans in its dystopian scenario. A century from now, over-population, immortality (sic) and the abolition of child-bearing have turned people into “Units”, who survive rather than live. Religion has been scrapped; robots are reserved for Sundays in an illusion of independence.
To keep their citizens moderately subdued, governments, corporations and a sinister scientist have begun cloning and conditioning embryos, which are formed from . . . well, read the book and gulp. They’re miniature humans, called Littlers, just 30cm high. They live in baskets; they’re “mute but cute” and they make adorable pets, fluttering their eyelashes to get their food bowls filled.
It’s quite a concept and UK author Amy Lilwall uses it to build sustained metaphors of loneliness, fear and the slow growth of empathy. Biggerer Susan wraps Littler (the labels do become rather clumsy and cloying) Bonbon in a scarf and is shocked when her other cute pet Jinx kicks her.
She’s appalled to hear of owners who mutilate their Littlers’ ears during cheap haircuts; who turn cats and dogs loose on them; tie them to toilet seats when they leave the house. Meanwhile, the Littlers struggle to climb stairs, can’t comprehend why some of their own start screaming when Biggerers in white coats stoop over them and are astounded and aghast at human love-making.
It’s long; it’s self-indulgent and often simplistic: big is mostly bad, small nearly always gentle and wounded. It includes loss, anguish and a growing awareness that knowledge carries fear as well as power. It arrives at an ending with new bodies, new ways of comprehending and remembering, a possible new order ahead.
It also demands close reading. Lilwall renders thoughts and perspectives in a torrent of metaphors, neologisms, broken syntax: “all of the anxiety bats and lovey-dovey doves that the night had let fly around her brain”. You may find yourself wishing the author would just get on with it.
It’ll inevitably be called heart-warming. Love does indeed conquer all and it sometimes does so via sentiment rather than emotion. But it’s a daring, startling debut.
Watch this author’s next space.