Conquest

Author:Nina Allen

I read a lot, and rarely post reviews on what at heart is still a music site. However there are some books that affect you so much you want to make sure everyone knows about them, and even better that they discuss with you. So it is with the 2023 novel Conquest by Nina Allan, the first book of hers I’ve read.

She broadly writes within the sci-fi and fantasy genres, though as will become clear this is a novel that escapes easy genre classification. The start of the novel details the disappearance of Frank, a man increasingly prone to viewing the world through a conspiracy lens, in this case one that centres around an ongoing alien invasion, government supersoldiers being bred to battle this, and the hushing up of anyone who discovers the truth. Recovering from hospitalisation for ‘Generalised Anxiety Disorder’ After meeting fellow believers he fails to return home, leading to his girlfriend recruiting a private detective, Robin, to find out what has happened to Frank.

This is the bare outline of the plot – and the sections of the narrative that concern Robin can be read like a detective story. There are clues along the way – a journalist working on a story about ecological change who turns up dead; posts on a message board called Laaventura that is a focus for the conspiracy; and finally a research centre in Scotland. Like all good cases this one proves a little close to home for Robin, dredging up her tangled upbringing on the fringes of organised crime.

But the uncanny power of this novel comes from two main sources for me, both brilliantly realised. The first is the interpolation of other texts within the main narrative. Chiefly they are an invented fifties sci-fi story by one John Sylvester, modelled on writers like Heinlein or John W Campbell. The Tower concerns an alien invasion which has already happened: a devastated earth has fought a bitter but successful war against the Gliese and is rebuilding. An Ayn Rand-esque architect wins the contract for a showpiece New York development opportunity with a unique vision: he will use stone from the defeated alien world to build with which has unique properties. This story is taken as a guide to the real alien invasion by the conspiracy groups Frank has been communicating with online.

One leader of the group is Edmund de Groot, a Dutch film lecturer. His is the second text: a lengthy review of the (real) film Upstream Colour by Primer maker Shane Carruth, a film I’ve seen and can recommend. There is a lengthy discussion of the film itself, another proposed alien invasion story, this time in the form of a parasitical worm that renders those hosting it extremely suggestible, and able to telepathically communicate with others hosts. Layered over this is De Groot’s own memories of events from his own life that parallel the film and seem to indicate the presence of otherwise inexplicable forces at work.

The final text is another review, this time of the modernist German composer Hans Werner henze (real) and the premiere performance of a song cycle with poems by Ingeborg Bachmann. The review is by a female critic, and along with discussion of the need to remake German music from scratch after WW2, Henze’s position vis a vis more radical composers, there is a discussion about the different treatments afforded male and female artists and Bachmann’s personal life.

Robin discovers these texts, and the last two in particular seem to resonate with her as more than potential clues, as she draws closer to the reason behind Frank’s disappearance.

There’s one final reason to bring this novel to the attention of Wordites. Both Frank and Robin share an obsession with the works of JS Bach. One of first things we learn about Frank is he has 149 different recordings of the Goldberg Variations. Over the course of the novel Robin encounters and discusses recordings of the Violin Partita No 2 (in particular the Chaconne), the Mass in B Minor, the Cantatas, and the Trio Sonata No 3. As well as Henze and the early composer Heinrich Biber’s Rosary Sonatas. Bowie, Caspar David Friedrich are also important to several of the characters.

I have rarely seen the work of a composer more vividly brought to life in a novel than Bach’s here. The pros and cons of various recordings are discussed, and at one time the writer of the Henze review sends Robin instructions on the back of what else, a CD of Bach. If the music in film that plays in a scene heard by the characters is diagetic, this is the novelistic equivalent.

Allan is clearly a Bach nut herself, as the critical writing has real authority. However, just as Upstream Colour, the works of Bach are seen as part of a network of influences and connections shared by the characters and into which they read much more than musicality or film-making. The Brandenburg Concertos were on the golden disc sent into space on Voyager. Bach’s music, like computer code, is intensely mathematical. At one point Frank observes that we’ve already give the aliens the key to the the earth in the equations that underpin his music.

It’s not a flawless novel. Allen works really hard to give Robin a backstory, and to tie this backstory into the main conspiracy plotline. It’s a bit of a distraction. But the backstory, Frank’s disappearance, Robin’s family history and the nature of the alien invasion come together in an ending that offers a conclusion of sorts, without landing conclusively on one side or the other.

Allen’s novel is not about alien invasions per se, but about conspiracy theories and how believers can look at the same landscape or building and see something completely different to someone else. It’s the genius of this novel, and her incorporation of ‘the real’ in Carruthers film, and the work of Bach, Henze and Bachmann, that she gives you a sense of how if you start to look hard enough for long enough then anything can be evidence that supports your view.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for extensive writing on Upstream Colour (a deeply weird film without the additional layer, teased out here, of Carruths personal issues and the lead actress Amy Seimetz); Bach or Henze this will do the trick.

Length of Read:Medium

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…

It’s a very singular style, perhaps film is an easier reference – so Capricorn One, The Conversation and the classic paranoic thriller.

One thing you’ve learned

It was a cut-throat world in the musical avant-garde in the fifties and sixties.

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