Book review: 'The Uninvited'

Book: The Uninvited Author: Liz JensenPublisher: BloomsburyPages: 320 Price: Rs299Liz Jensen’s science fiction world of The Uninvited introduces you to feral, terrifying children — “creatures” who do not hesitate to turn on adults. You will never look at a child in the same way again.The novel starts with Hesketh Lock, an anthropologist who works as a corporate fraud investigator, being sent to Taiwan to investigate a case of sabotage. On the other side of the world, a young girl kills her grandmother by putting a nail gun to her head. The two incidents seem unrelated but then the cases of sabotage and violence by children keep increasing.Lock is a profoundly interesting lead character. As the story's narrator, he loves origami, and when faced with emotional situations, starts folding paper in his head as that helps him calm down. He lacks "people skills". He can differentiate between the numerous shades of a colour, and has names for all of them. Even a “white lie” is divided into shades of lily, ivory, orchid, ice and pacific mist. His method of work involves dividing everything into Venn diagrams and finding connections. Lock’s way of looking at the world is fascinating. He is a man who is aware of the dividing line between science and faith, fact and conjecture. His mentor Professor Whybray helps him and is responsible for some of the book's breakthroughs.Lock suffers from Asperger's Syndrome that allows him to study grim violence in a detached manner. This is necessary because the world of The Uninvited is basically about creepy kids doing evil things. It’s a collective sub-conscious at work, an anarchist group (“us”) rebelling against adults (“them”) for all the world's problems. “You made us be born and you made us live like that,” says one child. The children are feral in nature, they have their own rules, hierarchy and language — a mix of Japanese, Urdu, Polish and 20 other languages. They are also not averse to doing anything to survive, including harming the people they love. They crave salt, are extremely conscious of getting infected. They believe in an apocalyptic world, a second coming for which they stock up.Jensen uses Biblical allusions, folklore and superstition from around the world — there are Irish changelings, djinns and the Chinese Ghost Month. The story takes time to build, allowing the different connections to fall into place. The side stories involving ex-wife Kaitlin, his step-son Freddy and a beautiful investigator Naomi, all work towards providing a more personal aspect to the story and to Lock's life. Once the incidents of sabotage and child violence spiral out of control, the story picks up pace. There’s a grim look at what such a future could be — factories at a standstill because of sabotage, crashes and bombings, rationed supplies... a world in a state of panic. The only people who are content, if you can call scrounging for food and being locked up under observation contentment, are the children. It appears as if the children want to create a paradigm shift, “…not just a group consciousness but a cultural narrative in which they see their own survival as dependent on the destruction of a contemporary adult world”. The adults, meanwhile, struggle to make sense of it all, blaming things on alien possession.The Uninvited throws open several moral and ethical dilemmas. What would you do if your children shot dead their father? Would you denounce them, send them to prison or attempt to save them from whatever it is that has possessed them. Does self-preservation matter more than family? Lock faces a similar dilemma when his step-son Freddy starts showing violent tendencies.However engrossing the book is, its ambiguous ending lets you down and leaves you hoping for a follow-up.