Socrates Adams - A Modern Family

‘In a proudly kept household in the north of the kingdom, a family sits around the breakfast table.  The family all started the day off by taking the correct dose of an extremely strong prescription painkiller’.

Reviewing the royal wedding in the Guardian, columnist Marina Hyde commented on the ‘cocktail of fevered excitement and irate lack of interest that constitutes public opinion these days’, characterising the event as ‘a day when the country split in two, with each side accusing the other of madness. Much like a standard marital row, in fact’. For all that British people may profess their republicanism or indifference in surveys, when set-piece events like this come along ‘there is no quality more English than the country’s ability to suspend its disbelief when faced with the latest iteration of the House of Windsor story’. In his new novel A Modern Family, Socrates Adams suggests that this willingness to be swept up by the spectacle of monarchy is indicative of a sort of collective madness; the couple become a panacea for a psychologically damaged nation.

The ‘modern family’ Mr Adams describes is made up of four individuals: the father, known only as ‘the presenter’ and apparently modelled on James May of Top Gear, his wife Prudence, and their children Ellen and Bobby. They lead very separate lives, and their rare interactions are full of untruths. The family members exert very little influence on one another. Instead, each faces a form of peer pressure. The presenter fits uneasily into the culture of celebrity; bored by the bullying ‘banter’ of his colleagues, he is urged on by his agent and producer. Ellen tries to live the dreams of her best friend Tracey, being pushed towards a life of modelling and one-night stands with musicians. Bobby struggles to fit in at school but finds an external support network in World of Warcraft, while, most debilitatingly of all, Prudence feels under pressure to live up to the image of the media’s new ideal wife: ‘she just wants to be Kate Middleton. Kate Middleton hovers in front of her, brilliantly, shining in her good-girl-gone-great magnificence’.

Mr Adams’s style is straightforward, childlike at times, full of short sentences and basic facts: ‘On his drive home the presenter stops at some traffic lights. There is a lady at the traffic lights. He looks at the lady’s buttocks. He turns up the music from his youth’. There is an ironic edge to the delivery, a sense that he is satirising the way in which individuals are spoon-fed their information by rolling news channels and dumbed-down newspapers. There are some alt-lit reference points in the text, in its awareness of celebrity and internet culture, but Adams is more critical than most writers in the genre. In terms of tone, the writing is reminiscent of Stewart Lee’s comedy, and the text would lend itself well to spoken delivery.

Throughout the novel, there is a disconnect between the characters’ thoughts and actions. At various points we are told ‘Ellen masturbates. She is sort of crying’, ‘Mandy is uncomfortable… she says ‘that feels really excellent’’, Prudence ‘thinks about lying on the wedding altar and ripping apart her stomach... ‘I’m really happy to take the job’ she says’. They are all willing to suffer, or put up with indignities, in order to meet expectations or gain entry to new social groups. The presenter is asked to take part in humiliating stunts to perpetuate his celebrity status, whilst his son sells pornography to schoolmates to fund his gaming habit, and would be willing to go further: ‘Bobby think about what he would do to get the pre-paid game card. He wonders whether he would cut his foot off. He thinks he probably would’. Ellen is intensely bored by the world of modelling (‘she misses not being around the stylist. She thinks back with intense fondness about the time she wasn’t with him’), while Prudence’s desperate longing to experience her own ‘royal wedding moment’ leads her to sign up for a sales role at bidding.tv, immersing herself utterly in a toxic world of cynical money-grabbing idol-worship.

Kate Middleton haunts Prudence, appearing at moments when she feels especially low. As the wedding approaches, she is drawn into a vortex of Kate-mania, with the princess-to-be occupying her every waking moment, her apparent perfection mocking Prudence’s own dissatisfaction. At first, Prudence tries to resist, self-harming in a bid to experience her own recognisable emotions, but Kate’s omnipresence proves overwhelming, and she finds herself participating in the celebrations with the frenzy of the converted, buying fifty frozen chickens to practice cooking the perfect coronation meal.

Meanwhile, the presenter is involved in a car accident whilst trying to subvert yet another demeaning televised set-piece, injuring his leg. He is released from hospital with a supply of strong painkillers, which he begins to take habitually. Under the influence of these drugs, he finds the pull of the external world becoming lighter, and he begins to feel a sense of calm: ‘the presenter knows exactly what to feel because he doesn’t think about it, he feels it by accident, with no thought, just existence, making his decisions for him’. Gradually, the other family members are drawn towards the presenter, the opiates releasing them from the demands and obligations of the outside world.

During these stoned evenings-in, they feel they can share their true feelings, becoming affectionate to one another for the first time. Unable to move from the sofa, they allow the stream of wedding updates to wash over them, becoming passive spectators on the big day. Like Winston Smith realising that he loves Big Brother, they have lost the ability to resist the images which surround them. The family has voluntarily anaesthesised itself, replacing aspiration with an unquestioning acceptance of the spectacle of the royal wedding.