A stinging dissection of wealth, class and the media, Natasha Brown’s satire begins with a man named Jake gazing at a gold bar he has found at a farm in West Yorkshire. Outside, an illegal rave is taking place which will end in three hospitalisations and property damage. Pondering what to do with the ingot that he has just used to bludgeon a stranger, Jake decides to do a runner.

The story of the stolen gold is told by a journalist, Hannah, in a magazine article named A Fool’s Gold, replicated in full here, which she claims exposes “the fraying fabric of British society, worn thin by late capitalism’s relentless abrasion”. Her piece, which goes viral, features Richard Spencer, an arrogant, philandering banker and the owner of the farm, whose reputation is left in tatters; a contrarian rightwing newspaper columnist named Miriam Leonard, known as Lenny; and a group of radical anarchist squatters who call themselves The Universalists.

Universality goes on to dissect the fallout from the article via the varying perspectives of its protagonists, all of which makes it ideal for the multi-voice audio treatment: Norma Butikofer narrates Hannah’s article while Hannah herself, a burnt-out literary journalist who stumbles on a scoop, is voiced by Anushka Chakravarti. Clare Corbett reads Lenny, antihero of the culture wars, and Daniel Weyman reads from the viewpoint of the self-pitying Richard, who calls Hannah’s actions “a cruel confidence trick”. Though we come to understand that each of the characters has an axe to grind; which of them, if any, can we trust?

Further listening

The Calamity Club
Kathryn Stockett, Penguin Audio, 28hr 45min
Meg, a young orphan deemed “unadoptable”, has her fortunes changed when she meets Birdie, the new bookkeeper at her orphanage. This Depression-era novel from the author of The Help is read by January LaVoy and Jenna Lamia.

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It Could Have Been Her
Lisa Jewell, Penguin Audio, 10hr 47min
Lesley Sharp, James Norton, Emila Fox and Tim McInnerny are among the cast reading this new thriller from the None of This Is True author. A woman goes on a voyage into her past after a stray dog turns up on her doorstep and she sets about trying to find its owner.

Midway through his firecracker of a debut, 2020’s The Young Team, Graeme Armstrong hurls the reader into an exuberant account of a rave, from protagonist Azzy’s pre-party pharmaceutical prep, through the resulting mystical abandon and euphoria, and on to the inevitable crash back to earth. The description of the anguished comedown is a welcome noughties update of Kingsley Amis’s beer-soaked hanxiety in Lucky Jim. All this, set against a panicky backdrop of juvenile turf wars in working-class Airdrie, near Glasgow, won Armstrong a place on the 2023 Granta best of young British novelists list.

You’d think there’s not much more to say on the subject of illegal raves, but in his second novel he’s doubled down, while jettisoning the social grit for cartoonish political satire. Narrator William Patterson, AKA DJ Turbo, has a regular gig spinning discs for kids at the ice rink, until a new political party sweeps Britain, demanding a return to civilised values and promising to eradicate moral decay. Top of the agenda is a total ban on electronic music and its associated youthful gatherings. Freedom, fun and independent thinking is frowned upon. Suddenly out of work, Turbo becomes Scotland’s least enthusiastic data-input clerk, while secretly plotting rebellion.

While The Young Team favoured linear prose rendered in vigorous Scots dialect, here verbal ingenuity takes precedence over plot, with digressions, rants, handy guides to street drugs, and pages of dialogue set out like scripts. The cast of characters is presented in list form, with nicknames, lengthy descriptions and favoured soundtracks. Turbo’s lusted-after co-worker Jessica is represented by Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, Strawberry Switchblade’s Since Yesterday and Spellbound by Siouxsie and the Banshees; major scenes come with a suggested techno anthem for aficionados. Real as well as fictional DJs dot the storyline.

Taking inspiration from Scottish hero William Wallace, Turbo marshals his crew – Fish, Orbit, Section B and, reluctantly, his own “wee brother” Rab – into forming the Scottish Techno Pirates, with wild plans for a campaign of civil disobedience. Other groups quickly form around them, with predictable disputes over methods, specifically the use of violence. The dairy produce-chucking Milkshake Marauders are generally unhelpful, while the Wiccan, Plath-revering Scottish Hardcore Coven can only fitfully be relied on for backup. Rab, meanwhile, is scathing about his brother’s fitness to lead: “oot ae shape, rough as toast, n livin in the fadin glory ae yir young team veteran stories … Yi need tae sort yirself oot, William.”

Though wildly different in its patchwork, accretive structure, there are plenty of common references with the earlier book; we are recognisably in the same world of JPS fags, bottles of “Tonic” (Buckfast tonic wine) and cans of Tennent’s, and meticulously exact style notes. The revolution will be fashionable. To the ubiquitous Rangers and Celtic “taps”, and Berghaus shells against the ever-present Glasgow drizzle, are added “vintage khaki Stone Island smock, baggy cargo pants, n chunky fluorescent Hoka trainers” (for a lassie) and “a 2004-5 salmon pink and black Juventus tracky”.

There’s a melancholic sense of time passing as Turbo reluctantly recognises that he is now in the twilight of his rave career. Like Azzy in The Young Team, he realises that it’s not that the drugs don’t work any more; in your 30s you’re just more aware of mortality and physical damage. Also, “Taste freeze is real. Yir finger slips aff the pulse n new names n faces appear, while you cling on tae the familiar, past things awready done and been.” (That tracky, for example.) “We hud oor time in the sun then, n as soon n magically as it came, the ascension is over n yir hurtlin towards earth, losin altitude, fuselage disintegration, brace fur impact.”

There are hilarious passages of invective against hipsters, incomers and posh English students, yet for all the sledgehammer satire, sensitivity suffuses the narrative. Armstrong’s own references include Milton, Dante, the Bible, Apocalypse Now and, of course, Braveheart, with the striking cover art featuring Robert Burns as Che Guevara. Turbo is a less clear-cut character than Azzy, and the plot gets lost in the welter of information, but Armstrong’s passion for the subculture is infectious, even to the uninitiated. Beyond the glow sticks and the beats lies the compelling and universal question of what it means to be fully alive.