A Cruel Bird Came to The Nest and Looked In - Magnus Mills

I'd heard people talking about Magnus Mills a long time before I read any of his books. A typical conversation would go:

'I've just finished the new Magnus Mills'
'Oh, right. What happened in it?'
'Nothing at all'.

It's hard to understand how a man can forge such an impressive literary career on the basis of nothing at all happened, until you read one of his novels that is. Not for him, plot twists, explosions or conspiracy theories. Instead, each of his books takes us into a Beckettian world of understatement and mordant humour - the only disappointment is that they are over so soon.

His latest novel is a case in point. The opening passage, a roll-call of the astronomer royal, comptroller of the admiralty, 'pellitory-of-the-wall' and more, is typical of the way Mills presents Gormenghast style fantasy in a totally deadpan tone. The author is immediately presented with a cast of characters striving to behave in an everyday manner, but with no clear idea of their ultimate goals, and insufficient resources. This sums up Mills' worldview entirely, as he takes the confused inefficieny of the minor bureaucrat to darkly comic extremes.

Mills rarely gives a precise real-world location for his novels, and here the 'action' is based in the Empire of Greater Fallowfields. The emperor is missing, and his court are sleepwalking into a crisis, unable to think innovatively, react to their new situation, or display any level of carpe diem spirit. This is a subversion of traditional narrative history - rather than an empire falling in battle, or through a disaster, it is gradually and painlessly being eroded. You sense that not even the officers are truly sad to see it go.

The threat faced by the maritime Empire is represented by the arrival of the Railway, linking them to the mercantile new City of Scoffers. The Scoffers send recruiting parties to lure the Empire's workforce away, and soon even the high officials are transported from the court.

Mills uses the later stages of the novel to demonstrate his dexterity as an author; The City of Scoffers is a Kafkaesque world, although his subtle humour remains present. Modernisation is represented by clocks and railways (the passage of time has always been a preoccupation for Mills, mainly bus timetables). He plays with the reader, offering hints that the book will become a satire on Iraq, a political commentary, a holocaust allegory or a reworking of 1984, but we are only offered glimpses of each. Typically deadpan, Mills remains inscrutable to the last, and as always, leaves you wanting more.