As a physical object, the book is a thing of beauty.1 The cover is a modern design, vibrant colours, geometric shapes and random objects floating in an abstract limbo. And numbers: 381, 381…
That’s the title, THREE EIGHT ONE. It presents an enigma, promising meaning, but withholding it too. It feels like an invitation. Open your mind, it seems to say, and I will tell you something. Something new. Something important.
I should say I have the hardback edition. These days, I do most of my reading on a kindle, so this is a rare treat. A rare privilege too. How did I come by one? Full disclosure: it was a gift from the author.
Reading books written by friends is always a fraught experience. What if I don’t like it? What will I say next time we meet? Polite evasion, open lies, or honest truth?
In the event, this is not a problem I have to worry about.
It doesn’t take long before I relax into the tale being told and forget that I know the person who has written it. The text exists as an object in its own right. An artefact. An artefact from the future.
If it has been written by anyone it, it is by the narrator, Fairly. With introduction, footnotes and conclusion by Rowena Savalas, writing in the year 2314. I am seeing the story through the eyes of the future.
The central narrative purports to be written in the summer of 2024, the near future as I write, though it may well be the past by the time you read this. The world it describes is not like present day reality. At least, it is not my reality. But it is Fairly’s. So who am I to argue that it is not real?2
The story concerns a ritual quest that Fairly undertakes. But the story itself is a quest. As Fairly sets out on her journey, I, the reader, set out on my own adventure.
Strange things happen. Strange creatures appear. People behave oddly. There is danger, and even death. The whole is soaked in an atmosphere of elusive mystery. Meaning is just around the next corner: the thing that will happen that will make it all make sense. A bit like life, really.3
- THREE EIGHT ONE by Aliya Whiteley is published by Solaris and is released on the 18th of January, 2024. ↩︎
- As the author explains in her acknowledgements at the back of the book: “The world was a really strange, locked-down place when I first started writing Three Eight One, and I had no idea what was going on for a while.” Once you realise that the book was written during lockdown, it makes perfect sense. The outside world has become an alien place, one that we can no longer be sure exists as we remember it. ↩︎
- This post consists of exactly 381 words, the significance of which will be understood when you read the book. Or perhaps not. ↩︎