(courtesy Allen & Unwin Book Publishers)
After watching far too many books sit trapped in my To Be Read (TBR) pile for years and years, I decided it was high time a month was devoted to rescuing them from the reading void and diving into their promising stories. So, for October, each book review will be a novel long neglected but never forgotten, finally read as the author and published intended …
Novels that add a healthy dose of magical realism to their storytelling are always interesting affairs.
Too much magicality and all of the authenticity and emotionality of the day-to-day stuff feels diluted to the point of ineffectiveness; too little and it feels like a distraction from the groundedness of the real world narrative.
While Philip Miller doesn’t completely stick the landing in All the Galaxies, he comes closer than most to using magical realism to elevate a storyline which takes a cold, hard look at how intensely combative this world of ours can be and how this feels even more pronounced in a place where dreams hang in the balance and the future surety of life and civilisation hang tenuously in the balance.
In a near-future dystopian Scotland, the country is essentially split into city states following a second failed referendum on independence, the true impact of which is seen in Glasgow, the city at the heart of All the Galaxies, where workers at a failing print newspaper are, each in their own way, trying to make a difference as they hang in, by the fingernails it seems, to the lives they once dreamed of leading.
One of these journalists is alcoholic features editor John Fallon, a man whose passion for the power of journalism to change the world is dormant to the point of near-oblivion, and who is stumbling from one near-miss, career and home-wise, to another.
Your mother has gone away.
Roland nodded.
And she’s not coming back.
Roland nodded.
His father looked into his eyes.
She is not ever coming back.
The boy leaned into his dad, and fell into his size and warmth.
They hugged each other for a long time.
As All the Galaxies opens, he is searching for his missing son Roland, a university student who has made the decision to move out from his dad’s place in a bid to escape some potent, near-inescapable ghosts of the past.
While father and son never interact directly in the story, except in some flashbacks, they are an impactful study in contrasts with Roland ready to do something with life, while his father struggles to make the massively disappointing present not feel like a complete Albatross around his neck.
It’s hard though with his wife dead, his son somewhat estranged and his workplace succumbing to the modern hard digital march to citizen journalism which, if social media has taught us anything, does not heed any ideas of impartiality or supremacy of the facts.
In fact, the paper John works for, now in the hands of a once-supposed “white knight” backer, is heading speedily to an online presence only, its physical impact lessened to the point of invisibility.
This would be worrying at any time but with Glasgow’s city state government being battled over by Machiavellian, almost medieval powers who think nothing of dispatching a rival if it suits their interests, the need for a media to speak truth to power is more pressing than ever.
And yet, as All the Galaxies proceeds, it becomes clear that partisanship and media for vested interests is in the ascendancy and that the current drift to city-centric autocracy might be irreversible.
(courtesy Underline Literary Agency)
It’s a dark, dark but thoroughly realistic and sobering perspective on the world, which is balanced by some beautifully surreal elements.
Without any clue to who this person might be, at least at first, a boy wakes up in an afterlife where departed souls roam all the galaxies (hence the title) of the universe, their almost-supernatural to go anywhere and everywhere granting everyone a freedom to do and be what they like.
Freeing though it is, it takes some getting used to, and like many people, the young boy cries a lot, desperate to find his dead mother and find a home with her; he is guided through this challenging transition by a spirit guide, his much-loved and adored childhood dog Kim who, for all their supposed one-time closeness, seems at a curious, if caring, remove from his master.
While you might suppose the afterlife would be free of shock and alarm, the boy and his dog make a discovery that requires to leap one way or the other and it’s this unsettling element to life after death that lends All the Galaxies an air of existential crisis throughout, even in its more magical sections.
What makes the novel, which is surprising accessible to read despite its heavy focus and brooding emotionality (though there is some fun to be had, too), so impactful is how beautifully Miller weaves the extraordinary and ordinary so well together.
Granted, the idea of a soul roaming the galaxy with a canine spirit guide is well and truly out there but it works because as All the Galaxies goes on, this element is woven back into life on life quite affectingly and powerfully.
He walked quickly to the tube station. When he got there, he leaned his head against the red brick and hit it with his hand.
Fuck, he said.
In other words, the magical realism feels very much at home alongside the more grounded parts of the story, which is quite a feat since either one could subsume the other, or at the very least, leach it of its veracity.
But they stay in perfect, often moving tension, and as they weave together ever more pronouncedly, and we come to understand who the boy is, and what he must do to rejoin those he loves back on earth, and why that needs to happen at all – even in space, politics and manipulation rule, sorry to break it to you – All the Galaxies becomes a truly moving story of belonging and meaning and purpose and how belief shapes who we are and what we do.
Best described as a modern morality tale with some cautionary lessons for modern digital souls thinking civilisation and progressive humanity has handle whatever is thrown at it, All the Galaxies is an impactful affecting story of a father and son and how they connect, or often don’t connect, against the backdrop of a world rapidly splintering into tribalism and chaos, and how hard it can be to stay connected to each other but also to the wider things that makes life worth living and how, in the end, finding and holding onto that meaning, however, it manifests itself, can be the difference between life, death and all the mystical parts in-between,