Adam Thirlwell is a former enfant terrible listed twice on the Granta 20 under 40 lists with a penchant for tricksy, risky meta novels about sex. The Future Future is a quasi-historical novel ostensibly about Celine, a society woman in crisis after pornographic pamphlets about her start circulating on the streets of pre-revolutionary France, but fundamentally about how language is weaponised by men as an instrument of patriarchal power. As Celine recruits various writers to help her rewrite her narrative, the novel ricochets across time and space (literally – there is a trip to the moon) while radiating parallels with MeToo, the cult of celebrity, objectification and social media. It’s fun in places but Thirlwell – a naturally able, eloquent writer – spends so much time drawing our attention to language’s false realities that he ignores its ability to forge meaningful connections, too.
