Scotland On Sunday
15 February 2009

 
For her latest novel, Tama Janowitz leaves behind the catwalks, cocaine and clubs of Manhattan to explore a grotesque America 100-odd years in the future. Murielle lives in New Jersey with her two daughters, Tahnee and Julie. Julie has started a summer internship at the local bio-chemical plant, where they are carrying out a series of mysterious genetic experiments. Thirteen-year-old Julie is a soft-centred soul, and can’t resist rescuing some of the mutants from the lab - cute, pastel blue bunny rabbits with feathers, or dogs crossed with “aardwolves” that can be trained to talk.

Suburban life, on the fringes of a toxic swamp, is overshadowed by boredom and technology. Giant hologramovision screens dominate homes, projecting life-size images into living rooms, and tiny microchips stored in the ear contain credit and personal information. To pass the time, Julie and her older sister Tahnee get high by inhaling a little “steet”, or watching films where advancements allow Humphrey Bogart to appear onscreen alongside Zahara Jolie.

Tahnee is mesmerisingly beautiful, and cars have been known to crash as drivers strain to look at her. Julie on the other hand has the kind of face that her mother “almost always wants to slap. It takes major control not to.”

Janowitz’s sci-fi tale is subtitled “a cautionary horror story”, and her nightmarish vision of “America as it could be” is terrifying and darkly funny in equal parts. Her bestselling book Slaves Of New York took a peek at the mid-’80s world of real estate and art, earning her a place in the brat pack of authors that also included Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney.

They Is Us returns to familiar ground with her trademark style of deadpan misanthropy, but the yuppies and posers have been replaced by a weird collection of futuristic misfits.

The America Janowitz describes is a surreal hybrid of Huxley’s Brave New World crossed with tacky mall culture, and she paints it neon bright with her hallucinogenic, time-bending narrative.

However sickening or disturbing the story gets, though, when a pig-human cross-breed tries to rape Julie, or terrorist bomb threats creep closer to home, Janowitz cannot resist having fun. Her sense of the ridiculous seeps into every page, whether it is the tattooed and silicone-implanted OAPs in a nursing home, taking part in a nostalgic Madonna and Gwen Stefani sing-along, or Julie’s nonsensical lessons in fast-food management at Robert Downey Jnr Junior High.

As the story develops, boundaries between religion, sexuality and what remains of morality fall away, and the plot spins and twists through a chaotic, narcotic haze. Like one of Julie and Tahnee’s after-school steet sessions or the warped thought patterns of a character doped up on prescription medication, it becomes hard to tell what is real or imagined. Memories become unreliable, and sleepwalking sequences blur the lines between fact and fantasy.

As logic unravels, the pages of Janowitz’s book - a limited edition run of 1,000 copies, all signed - also become littered with clashing typefaces, gibberish poems and thumbnail photos of plastic dolls.

In the author’s safe hands, the mind-bending ride is not as unsettling as it might sound. She has created something thought-provoking and entertaining, weaving together all the naff, celebrity-obsessed clichés of Noughties culture with some of society’s biggest fears. Terrorism, global warming and round-the-clock surveillance are part of everyday life, leaving the reader craving old-fashioned values and the faintest glimmer of wholesome normality.

Brave, outrageous and unflinchingly funny, Janowitz’s oddball tale screams like an alarm bell at points, then rolls its eyes in playful disgust at others. Tomorrow’s world, Janowitz seems to be saying, may be an ugly place, but if we can spot the comedy moments in it, maybe we can go into it forewarned and forearmed.

(The Friday Project, £20)