{"id":78657,"date":"2025-05-06T08:22:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T08:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/78657\/"},"modified":"2025-05-06T08:22:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T08:22:10","slug":"universality-by-natasha-brown-review-satirising-class-oppression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/78657\/","title":{"rendered":"Universality by Natasha Brown review \u2013 satirising class oppression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Natasha Brown\u2019s incisive second novel, Universality, begins with the kind of viral long-read article you might DM your mates, featuring an illegal lockdown<\/a> rave by an anarchist collective squatting on a banker\u2019s farm, an activist bludgeoned with a solid gold brick during the proceedings, and said banker \u2013 who wants his missing ingot back. Chaos, clicks and conspiracies ensue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following publication of this feature, its formerly struggling author Hannah receives a level of success. Her former uni friends can barely conceal their surprise. They rely on their connections, plus help from mummy and daddy to fund their lifestyles, thriving off \u201cthe invisible privilege that everyone tried to pretend didn\u2019t exist\u201d. Brown smartly satirises the wheel of class oppression that is forever turning in British society.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s focus shifts to Miriam \u2018Lenny\u2019 Leonard, a middle-aged, girl-bossing white lady columnist who rides the tide of demagoguery, seizing the opportunity for fame, riches and eyeballs at any cost. Lenny\u2019s provocations are all too familiar in the present moment. Language becomes muddied, skidding from hot takes to fresh outrage all over again as she says the unsayable to feed the ghoul of populist opinion.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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Brown implicates the ongoing erosion of class solidarity, the inequalities imposed by racial capitalism, and those most vulnerable being scapegoated. If her characters sometimes border on caricature, they are no more absurd than the figures that populate our daily discourse and nightly screens. Brown captures the zeitgeist of our current overlords, with their finger-flicking edicts, whose wealth and power is enlarged by the force of exploitative rhetoric. Tightly wound and unforgiving, Universality is laudable in its attentions to the manipulation of language, satirising the now. As we chug new soundbites down, as algorithms churn us into the void, we must recognise this rhetoric for what it is.<\/p>\n

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Universality<\/a> by Natasha Brown is out now (Faber & Faber, \u00a314.99). You can buy it from the\u00a0Big Issue shop<\/a>\u00a0on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.\u00a0To support our work buy a copy of the magazine<\/a>\u00a0or get the app from the\u00a0App Store<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Google Play<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Natasha Brown\u2019s incisive second novel, Universality, begins with the kind of viral long-read article you might DM your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,4072,7056,6080,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-78657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fiction","11":"tag-from-the-magazine","12":"tag-review","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114459924530307943","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}