Umbrella By Will Self

Previously published in The Herald Magazine. 

‘Do I somehow partake of her shakiness, when I touch her do I begin to blur?’ asks Dr. Zack Busner in Will Self’s Booker nominated 15th novel Umbrella. Not just does Busner begin to blur but so does Self’s ambitious, modernist narrative in this multi-layered, often mind boggling story of a ‘sleeping beauty’, her ‘prince’ and the changing world around them. 

Modern fiction is filled with multiple timelines, narratives or perspectives, but Self pushes modernism to an entirely uncomfortable and often disturbing precipice. Umbrella is about Audrey Death, who is a ‘feminist, socialist and munitions worker’ in 1918 and the decades-long victim of encephalitis lethargica or ‘sleepy sickness’ in 1971; it is also the story of Busner, who treats Audrey using the revolutionary new drug L-DOPA in 1971 and wanders around in London in 2010, reminiscing about his time ‘curing’ the patients at the Friern Mental Hospital, the ‘enkies’ who are either comatose or have tics ‘ they yawn, they sniff, they gasp and pant like worn-out dogs, then hold their breath ‘til fit to burst’. Audrey herself repeats certain motions from her past, one Umbrella’s reader is familiar with before Audrey’s doctor is, thanks to the many sudden forays into Audrey’s earlier life. 

While Self often has a very strong disregard for any rules when it comes to narrative forms, his utter refusal to play along with any at all in Umbrella is startling even for those familiar with his previous work. Spaces, situations, characters, perspectives, timelines all change randomly, and often even mid-sentence. There are barely any paragraphs, no chapters and much (seemingly) random italicisation in close to 400 pages of stream of consciousness storytelling. 

Luckily for Self, readability was not a factor in choosing this year’s Booker nominees, though for his fans, there are many recognizable themes at play here - an obsession with the body, with human grotesqueries, drugs, alienation from the environment and of course free association in language all have a prominent place in his repertoire. The very first page of Umbrella brings to mind Self’s brilliant (and whip-sharp) Great Apes, with The Kinks’ song Ape Man stuck in Busner’s head. Zack Busner himself is also a frequent visitor to Self’s stories, featuring in Self’s first collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity and later in Great Apes, The Book of Dave, Grey Area and Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe. Busner is often considered to be based on Dr. Oliver Sacks, a psychiatrist from the 1970s whose memoir about treating encephalitis patients with L-DOPA in the 70s was a huge success, spawning both a Harold Pinter play and an Academy Award nominated movie. Of course, Self’s treatment of old material smashes any pre-conceived notions entirely. 

Self writes of his ‘enkies’, ‘Yes, urges, that’s what they have: uncontrollable urges’  and it must be said that all of Umbrella reads like an uncontrollable urge. Self has not tethered himself to any semblance of normalcy this time- Umbrella is very much a tough, tough toy for tough, tough boys and reading it is akin to free floating within Self’s genius, schizoid mind. At times it’s incredible, but mostly it’s just insanity.