Review: Devotion - Ros Barber

Of all Karl Marx’s writings, perhaps the most quoted is his line ‘religion is the opium of the people’. This has been interpreted to mean that the chief purpose of religion is to provide a crutch for the damaged, to comfort in times of hardship. This interpretation, though, does a disservice to Marx, to religion, and to opium. At the time Marx was writing, opiates were sold in first aid kits, as miracle cures; and not only can opium numb painful sensations, it can also cause visions of ‘such pomp… as never yet was beheld by waking eye,’ in Thomas De Quincey’s words. To quote Marx in full, ‘religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.’

Ros Barber’s second novel, Devotion, is set in just such a heartless and soulless world. In this faintly dystopian, near-future setting, radical atheism has gained mass acceptance, with groups of ‘Righteous Non-Believers’ setting up on university campuses, and prominent scientists proposing that religious belief be classified as a mental illness. At the centre of this debate is a young woman named April Jones. April is awaiting trial for an act of terrorism: during a university-organised trip, she detonated a home-made bomb, killing 15 of her fellow students. Dr Finlay Logan has been charged with creating a psychological profile of her, to determine whether she was legally responsible for her actions.

At first, the case seems open and shut; April’s diary is full of rants about ‘oblivious breathing machines… rape-fodder pursued or steadied by beer-breathers, curry-spewers’. The effect is ‘almost poetry, if poetry were hatred’. However, Dr Logan is in a vulnerable position following the death of his daughter Fleur in a freak accident. His rational, psychologised worldview is crumbling, and he finds himself in the grip of paranoia, panic and grief – experiences which he can’t explain or control.

Due to the public nature of April’s case, and the potential precedent it will set, Logan is determined not to simply write April off as a religious nutter. To understand her more fully, he meets with Dr Gabrielle Salmon, who is conducting investigations into Religious, Spiritual and Mystical Experiences (RSMEs). In the course of their meetings, Salmon introduces Logan into a world where spiritual experiences can be discussed seriously and empirically, free from ‘the constraints of Dawkinism and dogma'. This research seemingly offers Logan, and April, the comfort which mainstream science has failed to provide.

The American author Robert Anton Wilson spoke of a phenomenon known as Chapel Perilous, a psychological state in which the subject cannot be certain whether they have been affected by a force outside of the natural realm, or whether  the supernatural interference was a product of their own imagination. According to Wilson, ‘you come out the other side either stone paranoid or an agnostic; there is no third way’. Logan’s exposure to Salmon’s theories leaves him stone paranoid. His mental state deteriorates rapidly, and he is at risk of losing his family and even his liberty as his behaviour becomes increasingly erratic.

The relationship between Logan and Salmon allows Barber to explore the apparent opposition that has developed between science and religion. The two Doctors lack a shared language: 'Logan speaks of amorality, the absence of guilt, the dissolution of conscience. Gabrielle Salmon speaks of insight, peace and clarity'. Logan sees his female counterpart as a siren, luring him onto the rocks of unreason: with her 'red hair, red fingernails and impractical shoes,’ she is the ‘archetypal Other Woman’, her theories as dangerously alluring as her appearance is. She is working on a project which she calls 'the process', which aims to recreate the feeling of religious grace through electrical stimuli to the brain.

To mend his psyche, Logan appears to have two options: he can go down the path of taking prescribed medicines such as Anesthine, or else engage with Dr Salmon’s mysterious ‘process’. Both options offer him some kind of nothingness. Anesthine, as its name suggests, dulls the memory, potentially turning Logan into an 'inadequate clone of a husband you would find in a sci fi horror movie: same body, same memories, but something indefinably wrong'. The process, meanwhile, leaves its subjects’ minds like an ‘emptied carrier bag: spacious, near-weightless’. Neither science nor religion offers a full cure then; but the ‘process’ at least offers a holistic experience, engaging the senses fully and leaving the patient with a sense of peace and equilibrium.

Deep down, Devotion suggests that the real psychological damage is done by belief in progress and human perfectibility, an idea linked to Enlightenment philosophy. Each character sees a contrast between what they are and what they believe they might be: Logan is tormented by an idealised memory of Fleur, who in turn felt the need to disrupt his ‘perfect’ relationship with his wife Jules and his son Tom; Jules is plagued by the memory of her saintly ex-husband, Simon, and April is driven to seek comfort in the idea of spiritual perfection as a reaction to a traumatic experience at a student pool party. According to John Gray’s Black Mass, the murderous impulses of dictatorships throughout the post-Enlightenment era have been driven by the belief that perfection can be achieved. A worldview which doesn't take into account human fallibility leaves us with no tools for dealing with the psychological consequences of our mistaken actions. Instead of all this suffering, maybe a little dose of opium isn’t such a bad thing.

Devotion is a philosophical thriller, with fresh ideas fizzing from each page; at various times it put me in mind of Michel Houellebecq, Zoe Pilger and Ned Beauman. The exploration of radicalisation, through April’s narrative, is particularly bold, as Barber demonstrates the way in which an individual can find themselves becoming marginalised and resentful towards the society they inhabit.

Barber’s first novel, the Desmond Elliot Prize winning The Marlowe Papers, was a remarkable prose-poem detailing the afterlife of Christopher Marlowe as the anonymous true author of Shakespeare’s plays. Devotion is utterly different in subject, setting and form, yet the excitement of reading it is just as high. The prose is lyrical and flowing; I found myself re-reading passages so that I could prolong my enjoyment, rather than allowing them to pass by. This is absolutely not what I imagined Ros Barber’s second novel would be like, and is all the more enjoyable for it.