David Musgrave

Lambda, the first novel by visual artist David Musgrave, describes a dystopian England with more than one rotten apple in its barrel. Rampant cybercrime has led to a brutal, high-tech surveillance state whose use of euphemistic hypocrisy would be right at home in a novel by Philip K. Dick. AI and the Internet of Things have gotten well out of hand. Your electric toothbrush is emotionally needy and has civil rights you can’t ignore. England is also suffering from an invasion of sapient sea show more creatures with a human genome. They are the Lambdas, a small population with only a few breeding pairs. They are refugees who do menial jobs if they can find someone to carry them to work in a water bucket. Most of the plot follows Cara, a low-echelon cop, as she is shifted from cybercrime to Lambda surveillance. They are both thankless and baffling assignments. No one in the novel speaks with much affect. The voices in the story are surreally Kafkaesque, so I was not surprised to learn that Musgrave has illustrated one of Kafka’s novels. show less

The semi-formal tone of the narrator somehow subverts the proclaimed melodrama of this bizarre but witty and hugely enjoyable book. The early twentieth century voice holds the improbable events and bizarre characters we meet in its pages together. We willingly suspend our disbelief as the characters and plot devices of high melodrama are revealed: almost twins abandoned to an aloof guardian who in turn leaves them at a series of isolated farms in western NSW; a lost promissory note; a show more wealthy grandfather who builds house after improbable house leaving behind a journal of his adventures in architecture and exploration; blood on the boards from protracted theatre wars; a First Critic with a court of Critics-in-waiting, Apprentice Critics, Pages and a Cook buzzing around him.
Musgrave, a critic himself, intersperses the narrator's autobiography with excerpts from the grandfather's journal and, a twist on the theatrical themes in the book, a script of the First Critic's dinner conversation. The grandfather is allowed to present his architectural dreams and their realisations for himself. His grandson stands in for us seeing the physical representations of the journals and following in the steps of his grandfather's peregrinations across the country. We are also able to witness the grandfather's mental collapse from within while we see the effects on his wife through the grandson's eyes.
A brother, who after an accident becomes a musical savant, parallels the mental coning down of his grandfather into architecture, an enormous housekeeper prefigures the gargantuan critic with the comedic name Basil Pilbeam, various sycophants, lost lovers, stolen Aboriginal children, actors and plodding policemen make up an entertaining cast. The script subverts our notions of sanity and normalcy, while inviting us to see how artificial and ridiculous our own societal norms and aspirations are when seen from a distance.
I highly recommend a romp through this book. Spare a few moments afterward to reflect on the truths melodrama and indeed any good comedy expose about our own culture. show less

Lambda by David Musgrave is a recommended experimental science fiction novel.

The Lambdas have arrive on the coast by sea. They are aliens but genetically human and now humans coexist with them. They tend to live in flooded basements. New police officer Cara Gray is familiar with the Lambdas from her childhood, and now her job is to keep them under surveillance after a school bombing that a lambda rights group claims responsibility. She is now community liaison officer to the lambda. Now she show more must decide whether to submit to the patterns of technology, violence and obsession, or to take action of her own.

This is a complicated novel with an inventive structure that includes a one sided conversation with a Lambda as well as Cara's . Within Cara's narrative the novel also addresses the refugee crises and the future of technology. This is an inventive, interesting novel, but it was also a struggle to keep focused on the narrative. Many of the plot elements are left unresolved. It is also humorous at times. This will be thoroughly enjoyed by some science fiction readers but not all of them. This is undoubtedly an odd novel that works in a weird way.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher/author via NetGalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2022/07/lambda.html show less

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/lambda-by-david-musgrave-brief-note/

Marginalised non-humans trying to integrate into our society. Two and a half narrative strands that did not really add up. Omnipresent narrator has weird obsession with precise measurements, including of characters’ personalities. I didn’t like it all that much.