Sullivan has long been a writer I wanted to read. I tried one of her novels, Maul (2003, UK), which was shortlisted for the Clarke, BSFA and Tiptree Awards, several years ago, but I remember finding it hard-going. In fact, I’d chosen it as one of twelve books for a reading challenge that year. I reviewed ten of the books, failed to review Maul, and never even read the final book, Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979, USA). (For the record, the other books in the challenge were: Winterstrike (2008, UK), Liz Williams; Zoo City (2010, South Africa), Lauren Beukes; Dark Space (2007, Australia), Marianne de Pierres; City of Pearl (2004, UK), Karen Traviss; The Year of Our War (2004, UK), Steph Swainston; Spin State (2003, USA), Chris Moriarty; Shadow Man (1996, USA), Melissa Scott; China Mountain Zhang (1992, USA), Maureen F McHugh; The Steerswoman (1989, USA), Rosemary Kirstein; and Winterlong (1988, USA), Elizabeth Hand.)

Which brings me to Occupy Me (2016, UK), which was nominated for both the Clarke and BSFA Awards. In it, Sullivan pulls no punches. For the first third of the novel, you’re struggling to figure out what’s going on. The narrator is called Pearl, she is not entirely human, if human at all. She arrived on Earth in an abandoned fridge in a junkyard in New York. She is sort of an angel – at least, she has wings, but they are usually kept hidden in Higher Dimensions (HD). There are other things hidden in HD, including parts of Pearl’s organism? metabolism?, her powers, and her origin. 

She is tricked into flying past a helicopter carrying a billionaire called Austen Stevens, who was responsible for a series of atrocities in an invented African nation while controlling an oil company. He then left the oil company, having embezzled millions, and set up an investment company. Now, he is dying. He has hired a native of that invented nation, the sole survivor of a family who died in the atrocities, who was then educated in the US and qualified as a doctor, to manage his palliative care in his last few months. Because Stevens believes the doctor has a briefcase which contains a spaceship or time-machine or some other science-fictional device which can make the billionaire immortal.

In fact, the briefcase is part of Pearl’s body, stolen from HD. And she wants it back.

To be honest, that plot summary doesn’t do Occupy Me much justice. There are three narratives: Pearl’s, told in the first person; the doctor’s, told in the second person; and one told in the third person, which describes the events leading up to all the main characters meeting on an oil platform in the North Sea, where certain truths about Pearl, the briefcase, the billionaire and the doctor are revealed. The novel is relentless – the narrative’s sheer momentum carries you through passages that you simply don’t have enough information to parse (but those explanations do come later), and sentences that tip from sense to a sort of nonsense that seems entirely in keeping with the narrative voice.

I didn’t think I’d like Occupy Me when I started reading it – to paraphrase a remark I made to a friend a few months ago, I may have a catholic taste in fiction, but I have a protestant ethic to reading. I will finish a book, even if I think I don’t like it or think it’s shit (and yes, that probably explains a lot of the reviews on this blog). But the further I got into Occupy Me, the more fascinating I found it, the more the shape of it became apparent, and the more its arguments began to make a strange kind of sense.

There are novels you’re not sure you like, but you can’t stop thinking about them. Tiptree’s Brightness Falls from the Air (1985, USA; my review here) is one such novel I read in the last twelve months. Occupy Me is another. I’ve come to the conclusion both novels are much much better than I initially thought, but I’m not sure why and I’ve not really convinced myself I’m right. But now I want to read more of Tricia Sullivan’s novels, and perhaps even revisit her Maul. 

Who knows, perhaps I’ll think it’s really good on my second read…