Publisher: Jonathan Cape (3 Aug 2006)
ISBN: 022407864X
Hardcover: 384 pages
Every full moon night Lola Galley, armed with catching collars, tranquilisers and silver bullets, can be found on patrol pursuing lycanthropes – colloquially known as lycos. She works for DORLA – the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity – and any lyco caught roaming outside instead of being safely locked up on all fours with a saucer of milk, faces the full weight of the law. Lola’s also a lawyer who’s qualified to deal with errant lycos once they’re captured and often finds herself defending them in court – for better or worse. Thing is, though, lycanthropes represent the majority of the population and DORLA is seriously understaffed. Being lyco is not genetic, it all boils down to which way in which you emerge from the womb – feet first and you’ll get furry once a month, head first and you’re disdainfully referred to as a ‘bareback’, destined to work for DORLA. You’ll also spend 2 nights of every month until adulthood locked inside a crèche-cum-pound so that your parents and siblings don’t get night-time munchies and eat you. Lycanthropic activity, however prevalent, has to be regulated – so say DORLA and they should know, they have hundreds of years of murky past behind them to justify their regime, a regime that is causing continued resentment among the majority. The non-lycos naturally need to be protected but there are other implications for a society dictated by a combination of lunar insanity and hard-nosed bureaucracy. There are even treaties in place to prevent countries starting wars with each other on full moon nights – after all, with international time zones, it would be easy to attack a country where the majority of the population were metamorphosing, a few hours before your country ‘got furred up’.
Lola’s job is difficult and dangerous at the best of times, but things have been thoroughly lousy lately. A good friend and colleague was recently killed by a lyco and her young trainee got mauled, his throat ripped open, whilst on patrol on her watch. It’s touch and go as to whether he’ll live. Things get worse when another trainee is killed outright, apparently with a DORLA-issue silver bullet. It seems as though there’s a lyco out there that doesn’t want to stay put and also has a point to make. And it looks like Lola could be on its list of things to do.
Bareback takes a standard noir thriller story and gives it a big twist, with nods to I Am Legend along the way. Kit Whitfield has created a fully coherent and consistent world that is strangely believable – a blend of the fantastical invading the mundane world of red tape and ‘normal’ living. This is, in part, thanks to the matter of fact way the story is narrated. Lycanthropes aside, the characters and organisations feel thoroughly realistic. Our heroine Lola is smart, but exhausted. It’s refreshing to have a female protagonist who doesn’t have time to worry about her clothes or indulge in lengthy navel gazing about how great her life could be. Circumstances, biology and fate have determined her character and her role in society; she is in that sense as much a victim as anyone, lyco or otherwise, in a world struggling to understand the random order of being. As the story progresses our understanding of her character changes, both as a result of the developments in her situation and in her trying to look beyond the preconceptions the world has burdened her with. She has to fight the establishment as well as the lycos and as a result she isn’t always a sympathetic figure. She does what she has to and sometimes doesn’t like herself for it. Normally such a situation would cue lots of gothic angst and ‘woe is me’ posturing but Whitfield instead offers a character whose faults are all too human.
Bareback is the first novel from Kit Whitfield. It’s intelligent and engaging as well as being an unpretentiously enjoyable read. Recommended.
