Inspired by the concept of “big character posters” in Chinese society, Thomas McMullan’s disturbing debut novel is an original exploration of mob mentality and the increasingly blurred line between fact and opinion that dominates so much political and cultural discourse across the world today.
In an era where "fake news" is the instantaneous response of US president Donald Trump to any number of accusations levelled against him (that he withheld knowledge about Covid-19, that he hasn't paid taxes in 11 of the 18 years as scrutinised by journalists at the New York Times), people are openly encouraged to interpret facts according to their own worldviews rather than as information that is known or proved to be true.
The Last Good Man, set in a loosely postapocalyptic English countryside in an unspecified time, uses a tried and tested fiction formula: a stranger comes to town. Duncan Peck has left a burning city behind to find his cousin John Hale, leader of a new-world community in the Dartmoor countryside.
If the storyline is familiar, the details of this world are innovative and timeless. The community lives under rule of “the wall”, a public space where the townspeople can accuse their neighbours of committing various crimes. In these charges, McMullan gives a mix of banal and evil – someone using too much hot water, a father sexually abusing his young daughter – that cleverly adds to the absurdity of the town. Peck the outsider tries to get to grips with a Kafkaesque world where a man can have a leg hacked off for upselling produce, where a murder that Peck witnesses with his own eyes is discredited because no one wrote about it on the wall.
Nightmarish world
Adding further to this believable, nightmarish world are the subtle details divulged along the way. The community will ignore one remark on the wall, but multiple charges will set “the chasers” after a person. People are punished by languishing “in the stocks” or are “burdened” with heavy furniture strapped to their backs. The horror of the book is that this world could have happened centuries ago, it may well happen in the future, and, worst of all, elements of it are happening right now.
The troubling, uncanny atmosphere is evoked from the beginning as Peck hides in the wilderness to watch his cousin and the chasers hunt a recently accused man: “His movements are calm and measured. If Peck had only just stumbled on the scene, he would have mistaken it for kindness.” Throughout the novel there is the fusion of normality and the grotesque: “He will be put on show in front of a butcher’s, a baker’s, a tearoom and a post office that’s been converted into a bric-a-brac shop.”
A central theme is the fallibility of words in such an environment. Language loses currency and facts are replaced by feelings: “ ‘You could argue forever about that,’ he whispers. ‘It’s uncertain. What’s certain is the way people feel. And from what was on the wall it’s certain that they feel he’s done wrong.’ ”
McMullan is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in publications including the Guardian, Observer, Times Literary Supplement, Frieze and BBC News. He has been published in 3:AM Magazine, Lighthouse and Best British Short Stories.
Sham democracy
His debut novel has echoes of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. There are obvious parallels too with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the use of the wall as such a literal symbol for the destruction that human beings wreak on each other when democratic law fails. The great irony of the wall in The Last Good Man is that people view it as democratic, but it is a sham democracy that can be easily manipulated by those with power, or even neighbours with a minor grudge.
Not everything works. Characters – Peck, Hale, neighbours Peter and Charlotte and their daughter Maisie – are vivid creations initially but their development suffers for the sake of plot twists. The relationship between the cousins is particularly compelling, so it seems a shame not to go deeper into it. Elsewhere, Peck’s quasi-girlfriend Grace is pleasingly enigmatic to begin with but never comes out of the shadows. A backstory involving Peck’s mother echoes certain themes of the book but is largely uninteresting and would be better spent back in Dartmoor or in giving glimpses of the disintegration of the old world.
The prose style is filmic: lots of short, descriptive sentences, the camera panning from one disaster to the next, almost like a screenplay. McMullan succeeds with this style because it suits the subject matter of his book so well. The Last Good Man is eerie and atmospheric in evoking a chilling, believable dystopia that could be coming to a town near you.
