The Pyramid of Wants, Ernest Worth’s debut novel, has two alternating narrators. There’s Jack, a wry and weary highschool instructor who hides his “bitterness” and “existential dread” behind a “show of bonhomie”, each in his classroom and his life. And there may be Linda, Jack’s 70-year-old mom, a longtime devotee of a spread of way of life dietary supplements – bought by means of a multi-level advertising and marketing scheme – who’s intent on revitalising her personal place inside its pyramid of sellers by turning into a wellness influencer on social media. Jack is accustomed to watching his mom’s movies and livestreams, principally for the depraved sense of schadenfreude that they carry him – however that is the restrict of their relationship. The pair haven’t spoken since Jack’s transition, now over a decade in the past, though the rift between was for much longer within the making.
Linda takes pleasure in, even insists on, her good well being and capability – she is, she claims, “routinely mistaken for a 65-year-old” – and considers this proof of the efficacy of the dietary supplements she spruiks. However when she breaks her hip in a sudden fall, Jack and his sister Alice are compelled to fly to her Noosa house to assist out whereas she recovers, and it shortly turns into clear that every one is just not because it appears. Not with Linda, nor together with her enterprise, and positively not together with her husband Peter, whose obscure forgetfulness is veering right into a steep decline.
Jack and Linda’s alternating voices, working in counterpoint, are what give Worth’s novel a lot of its madcap vitality. Each characters are compelling, of their very alternative ways, and each are, to differing levels, unreliable as narrators – intently targeted on their very own travails, and constrained by their agency worldviews. Linda is wilfully optimistic and unable to countenance something that doesn’t match inside her plans; Jack’s wounded cynicism undercuts her flights of fancy. However these two voices additionally permit Worth to finely draw the complexities of their household dynamic – there may be a lot that they can’t say to one another, and so some ways through which they each need to be seen and supported, regardless of their radical opposition.
The ebook is sharpest in its humour when skewering the wellness trade and influencers, particularly of their cautious curation of their our bodies and lives on social media. Linda tries always to get her visiting youngsters to take her to the native seashore, as a result of it makes for a superb backdrop for her posts. Included in her vary of merchandise, all with terrifically ridiculous names, is a Supreme Vitality complement which has, since she stocked up on it, been banned as a result of it accommodates amphetamines. Worth explores a few of the fascinating overlaps between the wellness group and conspiratorial considering, particularly across the pandemic: Linda chides her youngsters for sporting face masks on their flight, and has refused a Covid vaccine.
What’s most refreshing about The Pyramid of Wants, although, is its therapy of Jack. The reader is aware of from the opening chapters that Jack is trans, and whereas this reality is necessary to his experiences, and to a lot of his interactions together with his household – Linda believes, for instance, that she has been supportive by giving Jack Supreme Man dietary supplements shortly after his popping out – it’s by no means the only function of his character. This isn’t a narrative about identification, and it’s nonetheless, sadly, uncommon to see a trans character handled with this degree of dignity and deep complexity.
The Pyramid of Wants is a wickedly humorous ebook – and whereas none of Worth’s characters are spared the sharpness of its satire, he’s nonetheless beneficiant with their foibles, as a result of the best failing all of them share is a willingness to imagine in, or put their religion in, one thing that offers them some sense of management inside their lives. That is its tragedy, as a lot as it’s the fodder for its comedic materials, and it makes for a ebook with a substantial amount of coronary heart. It is rather a lot about betrayal – each the betrayal of the religion that pyramid schemes foster in and demand of their operators, and of the flexibility of the household to know one another as they develop and alter and age. It’s an assured debut – fast-paced, humorous and compelling, and deeply affecting too.
