(Audio) Book Review: Universality by Natasha Brown

I received an audio version of this book thanks to Libro.fm and the publisher. All opinions are my own.

Universality is the sort of book that just as I felt the story was getting somewhere or I was understanding the characters, it moved to a new section or, finally, just ended. There’s a story here and it could be an interesting one but I don’t feel like we ever actually got to it.

The first, and main, section of the book is an in-depth news article. A man was attacked and beaten heavily with a bar of gold. This crime took place on a farm where a group of squatters? cult members? survivalists? have formed a sort of commune. On the night in question, there was a gathering going on, illegal under England’s 2020 lockdown rules.

The news article interviews the members of this group, as well as the multi-millionaire who actually owns the property, plus the woman who is the connection between the millionaire and the attacker. It’s an interesting expose and an article that is attempting to shine some light on the disparities of class in modern English society.

From there we move into the present timeline where the writer of the article has had some moderate success and fame from her journalism but is still struggling to get by. She’s at a party with a few friends, all more successful than her and she isn’t quite revealing everything about how that news article came to be. We also get a look closer at some of the other characters featured in the article until the book, rather abruptly, ends.

Part of the problem here has to do with marketing, I think. I started the book thinking it was more like a mystery – who is the attacker and why did he do it? But his identity is revealed from the first line and while the blurbs want you to think there is more to the story behind the attack, the book never really follows that lead. What the book wants to be about is a commentary on class and wealth. The owner of the property is so wealthy that he has apparently left behind (and forgotten) a gold bar at a property he owns and never uses. The commune is using this property that would otherwise be empty, yet they are legally in the wrong. And the attacker – is he a dangerous lunatic or a disenfranchised young man? The woman who connects these two men is a controversial figure that, I don’t think, we’re not supposed to agree with and yet it felt like she was being presented as correct. Just as I felt we were going to have a greater revelation, the book ended.

Brown’s writing is strong and the audio narration was well done. I don’t think I’d feel frustrated with this book if those two things weren’t true. I wanted more because I was intrigued by what there is here.