Maul Book

This is another re-read of a longtime bookshelf inhabitant, a sci-fi novel I hadn't read for so many years that I couldn't remember what happened at the end. It stood up pretty well to re-reading, but definitely had more of an impact on me when I was younger. The reasons for this include, a) back then I'd rarely come across a sci-fi novel with a majority-female cast of characters, b) it is partially set within a shopping mall and explores the Ballardian notion of oppressive buildings promoting madness, c) I related to the main character Sun, as she finds violence far more interesting than boys and is obsessed with the collapse of civilisation. The last was probably the most important; Sun's point of view remains the best thing about the novel in my opinion.

As to what 'Maul' is actually about, it has an Alice In Wonderland-esque 'Which dreamed it?' structure. Two parallel plot threads occur, one of which might be a hallucinatory allegory for part of the other, or two parts of reality bleeding into one another. This is left ambiguous. One thread consists of Sun and her friends heavily armed adventures in a shopping mall, the other is set in a future where most humans with a Y chromosome have been wiped out by plagues. In the latter, a group of female scientists have a man called Meniscus imprisoned in order to study the weird bugs he is infected with. A particularly effective aspect of both threads in the satire on consumer culture and advertising. The world-building of a 'Y-plague' decimated world is made vivid by snippets of advertising, suggesting that consumer culture has adapted easily to the conditions. (Now that I think about it, perhaps there is a subtextual framing of consumerism as an especially resilient virus?) I was less impressed with the treatment of gender, which seemed not dissimilar to that in Life's; both books focus on the Y chromosome as central to gender.

I enjoyed the reread for nostalgia and my continued appreciation of Sun, however I can see why I forgot the ending. It isn't especially notable. In fact, probably the most memorable thing about the novel is the beginning. It's the only book I've ever read that opens with a woman's thought-processes while masturbating.