They, by Kay Dick

An eerily anonymous group of anti-art thugs and brutes roam the English countryside, maiming and torturing artists and free thinkers.

The setting is rural England, the period unknown, but one presumes contemporaneous. A nameless narrator, of undisclosed gender, describes a loose, fractured community of artists, writers and loners. They live secretively, trying their best to shroud their creative and introspective activities. For any type of individualism, art or expressive emotion is loathed by “they”, a menacing group who persecute, torture and permanently maim. Artists are blinded, musicians made deaf, writers have their memories purged. “They” move about the countryside like a Medieval mob, creating a dread atmosphere of looming horror. “They” like a brutal kind of order and eschew nature, favouring ugly, utilitarian architecture and deadening safety.

"Think of their passion for marinas, not for the boats, but for the car parks, the amusement arcades, the proliferation of restaurants and blocks of high-tower apartments. They like to see the sea pulverized out of its natural area by concrete. They dislike the beaches for the same reasons; bathing in the sea is too uneasy a freedom, they prefer swimming pools. They like nothing better than to sit in their cars and look at the sea from the safe harbour of a monstrous marina complex."

English author Kay Dick subtitled her 1977 novel “a sequence of unease”, a phrase that captures They perfectly. The writing is very spare, and does not give too many details, calling on the reader to imaginatively fill in the spaces. There is no plot, and no real character development either. Each chapter, in fact, reads like a separate short story, with characters appearing and disappearing. The overall effect is like living in a slowly paced nightmare. Dick's quiet, calm prose throws into terrible relief the barbarities “they” unleash, all committed in a rural setting where no one – no police, no law courts – can hear you scream. It's the tyranny of philistines.

They sank without a trace after it was first published. It was almost impossible to find as a second hand copy. A literary editor actually found it at an Op Shop and hence its rediscovery. They is a strange, unsettling book. A curious little dystopian tale that will intrigue readers of the genre.