The 2010s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction (The Decades Series)

This volume relates the British fiction of the decade to the contexts in which it was written and received in order to examine and explain contemporary trends, such as the rise of a new working-class fiction, the ongoing development of separate national literatures of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and shifts in modes of attention and reading. From the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, the 2010s have been a decade of an ongoing crisis which has penetrated every area of everyday life. Internationally, there has been an ongoing shift of global power from the US to China, and events and developments such as the election of Donald Trump as US President, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the rise of the populist right across Europe and very gradually the incipient effects variously of AI. Nationally, there has been a decade of austerity economics punctuated by divisive referendums on Scottish independence and whether Britain should leave or remain in the EU. Balancing critical surveys with in-depth readings of work by authors who have helped define this turbulent decade, including Nicola Barker, Anna Burns, Jonathan Coe, Alys Conran, Bernadine Evaristo, Mohsin Hamid, James Kelman, James Robertson, Kamila Shamsie, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith and Adam Thirlwell, among others, this volume illustrates exactly how their key themes and concerns fit within the social and political circumstances of the decade. Cover Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents Series Editors’ Preface Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Fiction of the 2010s in the Context of a Country in Transition Cultural, political and social changes in Britain during the 2010s Precarity, affect, and embodiment Notes Works cited 1 Fictions of the Break-Up Introduction: Beyond the cosy catastrophe Territorial disintegration Part 1: ‘This was the land’ Territorial disintegration Part 2: Cofi wch Aberystwyth Binary faultlines Amidst the flotsam and jetsam of the postwar state Conclusion: ‘Myths from a geography long forgotten or not yet invented’ Notes Works cited 2 Fiction in the Age of Distraction: Reading and Attention in the 2010s The canary in the coalmine The politics of the attention economy Like, follow, ghost Notes Works cited 3 Border Crossings: Diasporic British Fiction of the 2010s Introduction Tragedy and the repatriation narrative in Home Fire Speculative fiction and the refugee ‘crisis’ in Hamid’s Exit West Realism, violence, and second-generation resilience in In Our Mad and Furious City Notes Works cited 4 ‘Defining it is a Struggle’: Working-Class Fiction in the 2010s Notes Works cited 5 What’s To-day? Politics and Typography in Ali Smith’s Decade Introduction: A Political writer? The politics of words: Sticky signs Metaphors change the direction of travel The hyphen Hope Refugee Tales : Travelling signs, physical punctuation What’s to-day? Works cited 6 The ‘Teenie’ Novels of Jonathan Coe: Intertextuality, Satire, Parody, Farce and Irony Introduction: Coe’s 2010s fiction, parody, intertextuality, and What a Carve Up! The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim Expo 58 Number 11 Middle England Conclusion Works cited 7 ‘The English Problem’: Reading the Body Politic in Post-Brexit Fictions The sound of the gone away Post-truth politics The left behind Notes Works cited 8 Inexhaustible Literature? Contemporary Experimental Approaches in Literature History | Aspiring to The Condition of Muzak Form and formalism | The Johnson–Pratchett Problem There is nothing outside the text | There is (no)thing outside (the) [con]text | (T)here is no(thing) outside the text ‘Emotional and cerebral choreographies’ | Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home (2011) Memento mori | Gary J. Shipley and Kenji Siratori’s Necrology (2012) ‘In English dreams, their imperial lusts’ | David Peace’s Patient X (2018) A return to ‘Meng and Ecker’s Lowly Arts Club (Banned)’ | David Britton’s novels A spectre is haunting the city: Stewart Home’s Denizen of the Dead (2020) Inconclusion | Never odd or even Notes Works cited 9 Speculative Fiction of the 2010s Introduction Mark Fisher and the speculative theory of the 2010s The British Boom and weird fiction Impact of the American culture wars on UK sf fandom Infinite Detail and surveillance Conclusion Notes Works cited 10 The Neo-mythological Novel: Re-writing the Epic in Contemporary British Fiction Introduction Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls (2018) Natalie Haynes, The Children of Jocasta (2017) Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire (2017) Daisy Johnson, Everything Under (2018) Conclusion Notes Works cited Timeline of Works Timeline of National Events Timeline of International Events Biographies of Writers Index