Sterling Karat Gold

It's important to be open-minded in one's reading, but if this is the face of modern fiction, then I'm not totally convinced I like it. While I “get” the angle being pursued by Waidner in this short — and highly praised — novel, it is brittle, acerbic and disjointed. Maybe the author's angle is that such fiction is a necessarily bleak response to the hostile form that post-Brexit Britain has assumed. The point of Sterling is that it constitutes an irrational response to an irrational world: the consequences of not conforming. Waidner examines what it might be like to exist as a minority, be it black, working class or gay; how marginalisation can result in persecution. Kafka is cited as an inevitable reference — and interesting to see how his influence endures and is reinterpreted. As the novel concludes: “Now see what it's like to exist on someone else's terms... in someone else's violent fiction.” 4 out of 10.

By Isabel Waidner