Everything has to be "bigged up" - breast enhancements are the norm, and the tropical heat in the malarial swamp that makes up parts of London means the normal mode of dress is nothing plus a G-string. As a child grows, the youngster is entitled to be "enhanced" to become attractive - breast enlargement is the norm for girls, it would seem, and woe betide any parent who denies their child the opportunity... assuming the child makes it out of infancy, let alone into to puberty.

Some of the practices from Before The Flood have been shunned - immunization is a sin, so a child is lucky to make it through the normal childhood ailments: mumps, measles, and the like have become killers. And the mourning for a lost child, so frequent an occurrence as mini-epidemics ravage the densely-populated tenement blocks, is also so public. Vaccinators are an undercurrent, sought out and forced to confess, reviled as poisoners and abusers of little children. Science and Reason don't get a look-in.

Books exist, but none of the material from BTF is legal; self-help and self-exposure are really the only topics that make it into print. Consumerism rules - everyone is eating, all the time, whilst watching or being watched by anyone else, all the time. Visiscreens are everywhere, and anyone can put anything on those screens, using the omnipresent communitainers, video-enabled personal communicator and entertainment devices. Chicken and sweeteners seem to pervade; trying to drink or eat something without sugar in it is almost unheard-of.

Work happens, but from the tiny, cramped, one- or two-roomed apartments that house mother, father and any outcome of the public sexual coupling that is demanded of a couple in such a steady relationship. One day a week is Fizzy Coff day - brave the masses using public transport to get, eventually, to an office where Gr'ugs, praise and doughnuts start the day - common sharing of The Lord and The Love, and for anyone who does not partake, the public branding of "Weirdo" soon follows... to be the focus of a Confessor for such a misdemeanour is not a comfortable position in which to be. Political correctness gone mad would be an adequate description! Office bullying is a group event - and woe betide anyone who even so much as glances wrongly at another, for group retribution is swift and definitive.

Wholesome names, like Gucci KitKat or Princess Lovebud or Cresta Fiesta, are the norm. These wholesome names very often have the wholesome physique to match, as a proper meal in a proper high-class eating establishment like McDonalds is supersized par-excellence. The heaving crowd being squeezed, inch by fleshy inch, onto the overcrowded transports still running on the Underground system (yes, it remains operational!) is always eating - put a foot wrong and a partly-eaten chicken drumstick or a surgically-enhanced mammary could very easily end up smeared across your cheek...

I found the book to be a gripping read, but a bit depressing in an exaggerated sort of way. Trafford, his wife Chantorria, their daughter Caitlin Happymeal, their Confessor and the interactions between them and the people in their apartment block or Trafford's office in the DepSeg section of NatDet - the huge databank of everyone's most intimate and inconsequential details - become a little tedious. The light which Elton throws on some of the litigious practices today is cast in sharp relief in this story of the mundane and the hum-drum in post-global-warming London. Gross revulsion follows a meagre snippet of exhibitionist titillation, and no single character really shows any depth. That, perhaps, is part of the novel's appeal - are we so interested in what others think that we never develop our own persona? Is this a future that could have piqued Orwell's interest? Read it, certainly, but don't buy into it - I got mine from the local public library, and that's where it rightfully belongs.

Original Review (c) pgn0/ciao.co.uk Jan-2009