DIORAMAS

Austin’s debut novel follows an aging academic through a surreal future.

To read this novel is to be immersed in both its retro-futuristic setting and the obsessions of its haunted protagonist. Narrator Wiggins has retired from his job at a museum, and he spends his time musing on the way the world in which he lives—characterized by an abundance of dioramas large and small—came about. This is not a novel that abounds in exposition; it’s not until a third of the way through that we get a sense of when in the future we might be. Specifically, it's at least 300 years after an apocalyptic event; since then, efforts have been underway to restore the world. But there’s an underlying sadness to Wiggins’ musings, which abound with comments like, “Curation too is an act of despair.” And the inner workings of the society in which Wiggins lives include some queasy details: mosquitoes used in surgery, tumors produced to use in dioramas, and a disquieting line about “the birds made up of other birds” among them. Wiggins contrasts two historical (for him) figures: Michaux, “the great dioramist,” whom he admires and who was once more widely known and who can now be found “appearing by consent in a diorama”; and the unsettling Minister Goll, who had a penchant for dioramas and murder—and cannibalism. The end result is visceral and heady: a book that finds the overlap of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan, and the writings of Steven Millhauser. It’s a haunting piece of speculative fiction, a dystopian society mapped from within.

The nightmarish aspects of this novel’s setting sneak up on you and linger.