Facial Justice

“The past”, as L. P. Hartley famously wrote, “is a foreign country”. Facial Justice is ostensibly a novel about the future (with evident homage to H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell). But it also feels very strongly rooted in the past. John Sutherland's introduction in this edition is perspicacious in highlighting the partial depression of the 1950s — when Hartley was writing — a novel decimated (still) by war, with the threat of another (this time nuclear and clearly more destructive) lingering. Hartley also seems to fear the ever-encroaching power of the state, its intervention into people's lives. For the 21st century reader, the incursion of “Big Brother” is an enduring motif — even if Hartley was clearly not the first by any means to identify it (remember the panopticon?). But where Hartley is particularly good is on highlighting the de facto trade-off between supposed well-being in exchange for a restriction of civil liberties. This is a depressingly familiar idea and one which resonates unerringly. Much of Facial Justice seems implausible — a necessary suspension of disbelief — but Hartley is good on gender inequalities and also on the superficiality of beauty. I also like the “poetic justice” at the novel's conclusion, where the victim (Jael 97) turns dictator; like Winston Smith, but complicit, but in a rather different way. The sort of novel one fully appreciates, however, at its conclusion. 7/10.

By L. P. Hartley