Universality by Natasha Brown

 

This was an interesting novel, told from multiple viewpoints and different locations, primarily concerning a Pandemic era rave at a farm in West Yorkshire. As these things do, the party got out of control, a gold bar bludgeoning and the disappearance of the gold afterward, in the hands of a thirty-year-old man whose spend lockdown caretaking the farm. The author tells us early in the book that the missing gold bar is a connecting node—between an amoral banker, an iconoclastic columnist and a radical anarchist movement.

She spends the rest of the book illustrating that statement, creatively mixing the desire for wealth with the need to survive professionally in a time when no one knew what the next day would bring. Brown is a gifted writer. Like many readers, I’m a bit weary of the pandemic, having lived through it not only personally, but through the words of many authors. I get that, but I think this would have landed better with me had I had a few more years distance.

Universality was released on March 4, 2025, by Random House. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy.