The fictional character Septimus Warren Smith, from Virginia Woolfâs Mrs Dalloway, is the first of many spectres to haunt the pages of Sam Saxâs incendiary, prose-poetic debut novel, Yr Dead. Midway through Woolfâs masterwork, the war veteran takes his own life â and this bookâs epigraph, taken from Septimusâs narration, reads: âThe world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames. It is I who am blocking the way.â
The novel begins with a heavy-content warning: it takes place in the brief intermission between its protagonist setting themselves on fire â at a march outside Trump Tower in New York â and their death. Reminiscent of Ocean Vuongâs lyrical meditations on identity and Maddie Mortimerâs inventive, formally ambitious Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Saxâs book traces the traumas and political rumblings (against a backdrop of the 2020 presidential election) that have led to this moment.
When first introduced, Ezra, a queer, non-binary 27-year-old of Jewish heritage, is a worn-out bookseller, roving in and out of protests and fed up with their social media-palatable âpageantryâ, convinced âitâs never enoughâ. After Ezra self-immolates, Yr Dead catapults us back into their past; this unspooling story is their life flashing before their eyes, unwound in a string of brisk, lyrical vignettes.
Sax is also a poet (author of the collection Pig and a winner of the James Laughlin award) and it shows â Ezraâs compiled shards of memory often read as aphoristic musings on lifeâs enigmas. It all unfolds non-chronologically: their abandonment by their mother (âyou donât write a book to replace a mother, but to fill in her absenceâ); Jewish socialist summer camp (âto imagine a better world means at least you have the means to imagine itâ); an abusive relationship (âlove is just another thing that happens to you, like a rash or a bad radish or a car accidentâ). Ezra lists species struck into extinction, is spooked by the phantom animals of Pokémon Go and, scrolling on their phone, are âeaten aliveâ by empathy.
But Saxâs experimental flexing does not end there. Woven in-between are the false mythologies dreamed up by Ezraâs father (because âmost of my dadâs family lore ends a half a century ago with a drunkâ); their parents merged into one, speaking as a single, eerily disjointed voice; and even echoes of their ancestors, among them great-grandfather Herschel, a rascally soap-factory labourer who deserted his family in Russia for America, only to be toasted at Passover in the US in the present day.
There is comedy in Yr Dead but also much darker recesses. Passages grappling with sexuality and online and physical abuse are unflinchingly frank. The novel tends to skirt over political issues, refusing to namecheck Trump, for example, or reveal the causes that inform Ezraâs protests and their tragic final act.
But where this sprawling, time-defying Bildungsroman flounders is in its attempt to cover too much ground â it often only scratches a surface. Given the inventiveness in its style, imagery and form, however, this is forgivable: Yr Dead lays bare the deep loneliness of living in the digital age; how others shape us; and how, out of the ashes of catastrophe (and despite the worldâs ills), humanity shows through the cracks. There is hope.