By Robert Harris

Arrow, out now

What if your future lay in your past?

I’m a huge fan of Robert Harris. His novel Archangel, inventively dramatising the aftershocks of Stalinism in the wake of the fall of the USSR, is still one of my favourite books of the 1990s. Many are fans of his Roman trilogy. Harris is never short of ideas and always has something interesting to say.

Perhaps that’s at the heart of why I find The Second Sleep such a disappointment.

I shall try to avoid too many spoilers. Look away now, if you don’t want to know the result.

It was originally published a million years ago back in 2019, but garnered a lot of renewed attention in 2020, as its premise, imagining the collapse of our society as a result of a worldwide pandemic, was understandably seen as just a tad prophetic.

The framing of the idea is enjoyable enough. The reader is led to believe they are following the investigations of some kind of eighteenth century country priest only to discover we are actually eight centuries in the future and for some reason (which I never quite understood) England has reverted to a BBC costume drama where everyone rides horses and says ‘ye’ and ‘sire’.

That reveal is pretty early in the book, so not too much of a spoiler there, but sadly that’s about it. This is a book that definitely has an interesting premise – but that’s all it has. It’s a premise with very little in the way of a story, except a few more details about the premise, which of course has happened eight centuries before the action of the novel – and so you are left thinking that the most interesting bit isn’t actually in the pages you are reading. It feels like a wasted opportunity, where the ‘past’ and the ‘present’ need to come together and drive the action forward, which they never do.

Instead, the characters just discover some stuff and argue a bit, which this reader found to be a crushing disappointment. However, I was amused by one of the key images at the novel’s climax, where I was reminded more of my experience of trying to get an appointment at my local Apple Store’s Genius Bar than any kind of powerful testament to the apocalypse. Trust me, that will make sense, if you do read it.

Verdict: It is worth reading – anything by Harris is worth reading – it’s just a real shame that this book delivers so much less than it promises. 7/10

Martin Jameson

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