The Protagonist May Be a 5… But The Book’s a 10!
Review of Conor Sneyd’s ‘deliciously daft comic caper’ Future Fish (and there’s nothing wrong with a 5!)
If you saw my copy of Future Fish without any prior knowledge about me as a person, then you’d probably think that I hated the book and had tried my best to destroy it…
In reality, it just spent a week or so in my bag while I read it in snatched moments on the tube. (And it was also admittedly briefly a gorgeous orange coaster for a boiling hot coffee balanced on my knee while I sat in a London graveyard. Sorry book lovers {and Conor})
This isn’t to say that I didn’t consider attacking the book while reading it... After all, Conor Sneyd does at times seem to find an almost sadistic pleasure in cockblocking his protagonist and he certainly does all in his power to prevent Mark from having an ordinary and peaceful life of mediocre pleasures and success…
But then, that’s the fun of the book! As Adam MacQueen says, its “without doubt the petfood conspiracy anarchy-thriller romcom of the year”. Or, in other words, It’s bonkers.
So let’s dive in.
Spoiler Free Tease
Mark McGuire is your regular average and hapless Joe. Life hasn’t gone the way he hoped (or, perhaps more importantly, as well as anyone who knows him hoped) and so he has left the city to start a new life in a sleepy and godforsaken town.
Only, it’s not godforsaken — anything but. And, despite its appearance suggesting there’s absolutely no reason anyone should care in the slightest about the place, it turns out Ashcross and Mark’s new employer WellCat are at the centre of a bombastic web of conspiracy and scandal.
To make matters worse, nobody can agree what the scandal actually is! Maybe aliens? Maybe the devil? Maybe animal abuse? Maybe ruthless business espionage? All the above? Who knows — Mark certainly doesn’t.
All that he does know, is that hard as he tries, things never go his way.
In short: This is a book for anyone who has ever been a Mark struggling to keep swimming forward in a world of mundane failures and who wants an uplifting and funny caper to escape into.
Nothing But Spoilers
The variety of books stacked in the corner of my living room making up my TBR pile is almost pretentiously diverse. And, in truth, some will simply never be read as they’re there just to make me feel good about myself and my intelligent tastes. (I’m looking at you Dan Brown.)
What I loved about Conor Sneyd’s ‘Future Fish’ is that its the complete oposite of any pretentious bullshit: It’s a genuine and authentically silly book that delights, charms, and amuses its readers by plunging its incredibly straightforward protagonist straight into chaos.
And talking of straight, its anything but with the protagonist, Mark, being out throughout — even sharing his rugby porn in public with an elderly Nun in the opening few pages! This open sexual liberation continues throughout the rest of the book as he finds himself flirting with an obsessive servant of Christ, sent dick pics by an old man, and showing off his versatile abilities by both being tied to a chair, and tying a guy to that same chair soon after. (Oh and he gets laid.)
In other words: he’s a modern gay and there’s barely anything made of that fact throughout the novel. Instead, it is very much in keeping with the protagonist himself: utterly unremarkable.
Even the love interest Sean says as much when explaining why he likes Mark:
“What if I like fives? […] It’s refreshing to meet somebody like you. Somebody who’s comfortable with their own averageness.”
And this is what I love: However silly and improbable the plot becomes, the heart of the story remains this fully authentic and relatably average guy.
So, what of this silly craziness I’ve continually hinted at?
Well… it’s just good fun! While some of the ‘enemies’ of catfood company WellCat (Mark’s employers) are violent arseholes who don’t deserve a redemption arc, most are ultimately good eggs who are simply overcome with theories and extreme curiosities. Be that religious, alien, or environmental. This is perhaps shown best when Mark stands in the way of some of these people (foolishly believing he should be loyal to an employer who treats its employees worse than cheap meat meal), and instead of holding a grudge they completely understand and help him out in his times of need.
While the chaotic events are the ultimate driving momentum of the plot with them culminating in a satisfactory and presumably deliberately cliche riding off into the horizon, I would have personally been happy with almost any plot.
Why? Because Conor Sneyd manages to write the type of story I truly love: one with people I wholeheartedly like and care about.
So, whether you enjoy chaotic silliness full of laughs and charm, hapless average protagonists you can relate to, or gay romcoms, grab your copy of Future Fish today for a jolly good read!
(Just maybe treat your copy with more respect than mine has sadly endured)
