THE GLASS BOX

The life of Riley

RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Paperback/ebook

Author J Michael Straczynski

Publisher Titan Books

The idea of rebellion against overbearing authority runs through the work of J Michael Straczynski. For example, think of how Babylon 5 is, in key respects, an argument for political autonomy and democracy. Big themes, but also ones that lend themselves to smaller stories, as The Glass Box proves.

Structurally, it’s a relatively simple tale of the dystopian nearfuture. Riley Diaz is someone who thinks you should take a stand and, in a USA sliding towards authoritarianism, joins multiple demonstrations as a disciplined and peaceful protester. But when she’s arrested, she lands not in jail but an American Renewal Center, a new kind of institution for those with psychiatric conditions.

There are distinct parallels here with Ken Kesey’s novel (and subsequent film) One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in the way Riley never stops resisting, even when she’s isolated from other patients and, in effect, subjected to torture in a bid to break her. Despite her central role in events, Riley doesn’t, in truth, demonstrate much character development. Then again, as Straczynski noted when talking to SFX last issue, her job is to be a bullet fired into the institution. It’s the way she empowers others and encourages them not to give up that really matters in the end.

That’s nowhere truer than in her relationship with a patient dubbed Frankenstein, a disturbed and frightening figure who was mistreated as a child. Despite being warned that he’s dangerous, Riley befriends Frankenstein by reading him – what else? – Mary Shelley’s novel.

Gradually, his battered and deeply hidden but still present humanity is revealed. It’s a subplot that also plays out as a homage to the Universal monster flicks of the ’30s and ’40s – and does so while finding something of the pathos of the best of these films.

All that said, The Glass Box isn’t a fancy novel. Though concerned with politics, it’s essentially a thriller, one written with pace, an eye for telling details and an underlying quiet anger over the state of the world.

Jonathan Wright

Straczynski has his own history of protest: against the Vietnam War and in favour of the Equal Rights Amendment.