I’m Hanna Thomas Uose, a writer and a strategist for the progressive movement. Here I share what I’ve been thinking about (mainly how to make a new world and how we are with each other while we do it). Every quarter, I also send a list of things I’ve enjoyed. Take what you like and leave the rest.
The Mobius Book by Catherine Lacey officially came out last week in the UK, but I must have found an early copy since I read it a few weeks ago and loved it. It is half uncanny novella and half break-up memoir. Either can be read first, since the book niftily turns around and has no official beginning or end. In whichever order it is read, I imagine the second half experience to be the same – that of a detective who is suddenly encouraged to make connections between the two halves and meditate on how the reality of our lives can be morphed and shaped in fiction, or just turn up in surprising ways. Reading up on the mobius strip and its meaning, I found the following sentence: ‘a mobius loop has a structure that has a very good go at pretending to have two distinct and unconnected surfaces whilst actually having only one.’
I don’t know if Catherine Lacey sees the book this way, but it struck me most as a craft book, and I felt inspired by the challenge of thinking about my work through the same lens. So, today I am publishing an excerpt of Who Wants to Live Forever. Tomorrow I will publish a piece of memoir, taken from the time period that I was writing the novel. If you find it half as interesting as I found reading The Mobius Book then that’s a win.
This excerpt starts on p.40 of the novel. Yuki is a campaigner against the drug Yareta, which prolongs the human lifespan (if you can afford it). She has that morning discovered evidence that her husband, Sam, might be exploring taking the drug but has kept this fact from her. It is the day of a referendum on the NHS which, if passed, would make Yareta available over the counter in the UK. Greg is a campaigner alongside her.
When Yuki arrived at Greg’s, a tower of empty pizza boxes tottered on the kitchen counter, next to a mess of discarded bottles and cans. A stack of records leaned against the wall and one small browning cactus rested on a windowsill, still in its original plastic pot. There was nothing on the walls save a white projector screen, pulled down to show the ongoing commentary. The speaker was barely audible, but the subtitles were on, so that wherever you were in the room you had no hope of escaping the inane analysis.
Not ready to go home and be calm and reasonable just yet, she’d agreed to come to the party. Greg had invited all twenty-five or so volunteers to cram into his small upstairs flat, to grieve or celebrate together, depending. He waved from the beige sofa where he sat with Sahil and Bina, engaged in some animated debate. She waved back with affection – despite his grey hair and thirty years of organising experience, Greg was the only one who didn’t patronise her. But she didn’t go over – it was nearly 10pm and the exit poll was about to come out. Whichever way it went, she didn’t think she had the strength to absorb the result in a room full of people already three beers in.
Finding her way to the quiet of another room, she shut the door and cleared a space to sit among the pile of coats that had been thrown across a bare mattress. Her elbows rested on her knees; her head slumped forward. Her mind had been in dialogue with itself all day as her pen moved independently, making its little marks. Thoughts still whirring, she lay back and sprawled on someone’s faux fur teddy coat, at eye-level with Greg’s side table, its box of tissues and pile of Private Eyes.
An explosion of shouts and groans erupted in the living room, before giving way to a cacophony of chatter. There it was. The vote was lost. She braced, anticipating a rush of emotion, but none came. She felt oddly dead inside. Not deflated. Not defeated. On some level, she’d known this would be the result – too many people were curious about Yareta, too many doors had been shut in her face that day (‘Let people do what they want is what I say’). Even if most ordinary people would never be able to afford a longer lifespan, they remained hopeful that one day they might. Given the choice – given the money – they would do the same.
She needed a drink. Hauling herself from the bed of coats, she picked her way back to the gathering. A bottle of red was open on the counter; she poured a generous amount into a clean mug and made a beeline for her friends. Sahil was already holding forth on what the loss meant, what the implications were for class politics, why the left was doomed. Greg offered counterfactuals, counterpoints and interjections. Yuki hovered, mug in hand, and shared a glance of resignation with Bina – if these men were as good at listening as they were at talking, perhaps they’d have a better chance of winning.
A younger couple who’d been snuggled in the adjacent armchair stood up and moved to the kitchen area. They seemed in no hurry to reclaim their spot, standing and talking to others by the sink as they sipped from their cups. Yuki waited a few moments before slinging herself into the chair, extending and folding her legs over the armrest. She angled her head towards the screen, letting the subtitles skim the surface of her awareness while her friends’ chatter merged into a steady drone. Now that her body was relaxed, now that she’d drunk a mugful of wine, emotion arrived. Her eyes filled with tears.
The years stretched out before her. A lifetime of fighting battles when she couldn’t remember the last time they’d won. Some of the people in the room were ideologues of the truest kind, would live and die by their principles. Some of them, she was sure, would peel off and get sucked in. She looked around the room. Who in here would end up on Yareta, she wondered? Who here had celebrated their last birthday, at least for a while? Who already had a seed in the back of their minds, growing? And was that same seed planted in Sam?
This wasn’t how she had envisioned the world when she was young. Where was the life she’d been promised by Tony Blair and women’s magazines – one of endless opportunity and linear progression? Where your partner, at the very least, aged at the same rate as you did.
‘You okay?’ Sahil appeared in front of her with a bottle of Prosecco. ‘I have sustenance.’ He offered it up like a sacrificial gift.
‘Oh yeah, you know’ – she sat up straight and dragged a fingertip under each eye, wiping away whatever traces of mascara-black might be there – ‘it’s the reason I work in politics, for the emotional release.’
She took the bottle and poured to the brim.
Sometime later, she stood by a window propped open to the winter wind, half listening to a girl who was smoking a joint and banging on about the next election. Sahil and Bina were nowhere to be seen. Yuki longed for the warmth of her bed, a room that didn’t tilt on its axis. Sam. Sam. Yes, they needed to talk. She would listen. He would explain. They would work through this.
She wrenched her bag from underneath a man slumped in the hallway. Punching her arms through her coat sleeves, she thumped down the stairs.
‘Thank you! Goodbye!’ she faintly called.
On the pavement, Greg appeared at her side. She tapped her phone and ordered a cab, unable to absorb the words slipping out of his mouth. He stretched out his arms for a hug; she acquiesced. His usual scent of overripe onions had been replaced by something else, something musty. Stale.
‘I wanted to talk more tonight,’ he murmured into her shoulder.
‘Oh, that’s okay. I’m not feeling the most social.’ She tried to pull away, but he kept her close. He moved his head, she thought to kiss her cheek, but his lips touched her ear, and then her neck.
‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I think you like me too.’
A slow horror kept her still. ‘Greg, please.’
‘I saw you go into my bedroom earlier. If you’d given me a few more minutes, I would have joined you.’
‘That wasn’t...’ She shook her head. This was not what she wanted – at all – but a treacherous thought formed. Greg wouldn’t ever go on Yareta – he had to be past the cut-off age of fifty.
She stood motionless as his hands roamed her shoulders and waist. She wondered whether she could shout at him outside his own home, when his friends were still inside with the windows open. It was only when his cheek pressed against hers, when he tried to find her mouth, that she pushed him in the chest. ‘Greg! Please!’ She was angry with herself for prioritising his feelings over hers, nauseous from the sensation of his lips on her neck.
‘What.’ His eyes couldn’t even focus. He was hammered or pretending to be.
The cab pulled up. She opened the back door and got in without a word, her gaze turned straight ahead as the car drove away. The radio blasted Queen’s ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’. The driver drummed on the steering wheel with his thumb as they navigated the back streets. Within a few minutes the news replaced the music. She steeled herself as the newscaster read the headlines. The vote had passed by fifty-two per cent to forty-eight per cent.
‘You hear that?’ The driver looked in the rear-view mirror, trying to catch her eye.
She inhaled and assessed him. He wore a baseball cap, hoodie. He couldn’t be more than thirty. ‘Yeah. I think it’s terrible,’ she said.
Seemingly relieved, he agreed and shook his head. ‘Terrible.’
Together, they drove through the winding tunnels of South London, only flashes of harsh lamps lighting their way.
More tomorrow! In the meantime, I have to share that I received the most lovely review in this week’s TLS. V happy about it.
If you haven’t picked up a copy of WWTLF yet, please do!
Hanna
