One of the great joys of speculative fiction is that it can tackle big themes without being as hamstrung by the minutiae of the everyday world as so-called realism. This week we have two cracking books that fall into this category, novels that create vivid, off-kilter worlds that live long in the memory.
First up is Rachelle Atalla’s The Salt Flats. This is the third novel from the Scottish-Egyptian writer, following on from the highly acclaimed The Pharmacist and last year’s Thirsty Animals. Both those books demonstrated a writer willing to take risks in form and subject matter, and the same goes for The Salt Flats, a kaleidoscopic novel set in a remote wellness retreat nestled in the eponymous flats in the middle of the Bolivian wilderness.
A cast of half a dozen have been attracted to the retreat on the promise of working with mysterious shaman Oscar in an attempt to cure various ills. The story is told between Scottish couple Martha and Finn, whose marriage is failing and whose communication has seemingly disintegrated. They both have different reasons for being there, different hopes and expectations, and this initial conflict drives the early part of a compulsive narrative.
Joining them are a young British couple and an older American husband and wife, all six of them gently amused initially, but then more troubled as Oscar’s ceremonies and instructions get more extreme and sinister. After a drug-induced ritual goes badly wrong, those remaining have to reassess their situation and try to work together to stay alive.
All of this is delivered in sharp, lucid prose that evokes character and setting in equal measure. The bleak and desolate landscape of the salt flats is wonderfully and viscerally evoked, and the all-round weirdness of the location is key to unsettling both the characters and the reader alike. This is daring stuff: a novel that plays with genre and messes with the reader’s expectations, but is always compelling.
Doug Johnstone is an author and journalist.
