'The Obscured': A Magic Realism Novel

 The Obscured: A Magic Realism Novel

The Obscured: A Magic Realism Novel eBook : Rooksmoor, Alexander: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

I read 'The Glamour' (1984) by Christopher Priest in 1993, having bought it in a remaindered book store in London along with 'A Dream of Wessex' (1977) and 'The Quiet Woman' (1990) by the same author. Priest wrote straight contemporary set novels as well as science fiction and fantasy. 'The Glamour' straddled genres in that it is set in 1980s UK, but there is one element which is fantastical, i.e. that there are people who have the ability not to be seen by the general public. The term 'glamour' while having a contemporary meaning of glossy appearance in the media, had an older meaning as a kind of spell to cast an illusion of what people saw.

At the time magic realism a genre which had been recognised since the 1920s, was going through a popular phase for authors writing in English rather than translated from Spanish or Portuguese. Thus, this book fitted in quite well, though it differed from a lot of what else Priest wrote, it was a phase of 'quiet' novels by the author before he reached a new peak in his career with 'The Prestige' (1995; movie 2006). While I have read many of Priest's novels, admired his deftness in writing and enjoyed the breadth of topics that he covered, my opinion of him was soured by reading his 'Fugue for a Darkening Island'  (1972) which could be on the reading list for any aspiring Reform party member or apostle of Donald Trump in its racist view on human migration.

Still, in the years after I read 'The Glamour' I remained fascinated by the concept. I kept envisaging various scenes which have now gone on to feature in 'The Obscured'. Alongside 'Death in Amiens' (2018), this is probably the novel which features locations that I know personally. Scenes in West and East London, at Sandown racecourse and other locales in Surrey, plus those in Devon all came from places I had visited. Even some of the striking outfits that Peri wears were ones I had seen in southern England and Germany, worn by real women. Having read work by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and 'The Armageddon Rag' (1983) by George R.R. Martin, in 2024, I decided it was time to bring together the various scenes together into a novel.

I was determined in part to 'get back at' what I felt had been Priest's racist writing in  'Fugue for a Darkening Island' by taking his magic realist concept and placing it in the genuinely multi-cultural context of London, which was multi-cultural in his day as well. Apprehensive about cultural appropriation for some reason I had been drawn to Iranian mythology and in exploring this came across the ideal being to be the originator of the obscured. For the readers of Farsi, the language used in Iran, text on the front cover gives away a clue about how the story unfolds. The novel touches a little on the differences between pre- and post-revolutionary Iran, but primarily from the perspective of Westerners' engagement with the country.

This aspect also meant the novel explores issues around identity and families in the UK worrying about the colouring of their children's children, raised to prominence with questions asked of the Duchess of Sussex when she was pregnant, given her mixed-race background. This then began to connect with the British context, especially those families who had been involved with the oil industry especially living around the Weybridge and Walton areas of Surrey. Furthermore, between me first reading Priest's books and the mid-2020s I had become familiar with Dorset and Devon, the latter of which featured in 'The Glamour' and naturally in a particular form in  'A Dream of Wessex'.

The other prime challenge is how far technology has advanced since the mid-1980s. These days it is typical that you have to gurn at your smartphone to get it to open up for you. Facial recognition software is habitually used in many public spaces. Perhaps I could have gone into this a bit further, but I do look at the advantages and disadvantages of being 'obscured' when so much of our appearance and activity is being judged not by other people but by machines. Another challenge is the decline in the use of cash. This shifted the types of crimes that an obscured person would have to, might be able to, pull off. Simple pickpocketing is less fruitful in 2024 than it would have been in 1984. However, 'shoulder surfing' as people use electronic devices in public and the ability to take such devices, sometimes even just temporarily, can open up access to other opportunities to steal funds. These questions had been part of my mulling over these scenarios in the past few decades and I feel I explore them in this novel without it becoming an essay on identity and technology in our era.

While there is action and jeopardy in this novel, in contrast to many of my novels 'The Obscured' is more a character arc as Tara Houghton comes to learn more about herself and the condition she has had thrust upon her.