+ Review FICTION

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape) Reviewer: Donal O’Donoghue

Imitation might be the most sincere form of attery, but usually it is no more than that: a pale facsimile of the original, bound for second place. In this novella, Ian McEwan borrows the mantle of Franz Kafka’s horror satire, The Metamorphosis (in which a man wakes up one morning to nd himself transformed into ‘a gigantic insect’ or monstrous cockroach, depending on the translation) to carve out his own take on Boris Johnson and Brexit Britain and make sense of a world ipped on its back.

But this time, rather than having a man change into a beastie, it’s the cockroach who assumes the carapace of a man (“a gigantic creature”), the PM, Jim Sams. And seemingly cockroach Sams is not alone, with the rest of his party similarly metamorphosed in this alternative vision (or is it?) of Britain with politicians and nation divided into Reversalists (who you might know as Brexiteers) and Clockwisers (Remainers). The PM proposes a new economic future for the nation based on ‘reverse ow economics’ which argue that if the money ow is reversed then it will purge the system of ‘absurdities, waste an injustice’ and guarantee full employment. And when Britain adapts this crackpot system then surely the rest of the world will follow?

In the course of pursuing his dream of R Day, which comes with its own catchphrase, ‘ Turn the Money Around’ he clashes with the old enemy, France, spinning a tragic event into an international incident to boost his popularity and toughen his image. He has one-to-one calls with the President of the US, Archie Tupper, whose Tweets he greatly admires and comically strives to emulate. In one genuinely funny exchange the PM hesitantly asks the POTUS about his previous physical state.

The Cockroach is clever but not profound, with none of the savage humanity of Kafka’s original that made it a masterly work. Instead we get a few jabs at the state of a nation that is almost beyond satire