Matt McAvoy Book Review

I love the premise of this very topical, contemporary satire.  The vast majority of us, in our right mind, are waiting for the day – praying, indeed – that the woke left implode and figuratively eat each other.  The intelligent and rational amongst us know that they are just not compatible with each other, and their ideological fantasy world is simply not achievable.  Sadly, the rational majority are becoming increasingly silenced by a culture of fear.  Social media has fertilized an utterly unregulated wilderness of feral dialogue and pack mentality – like the inside of a high security prison, you’re either a validated member of a brutal minority or you’re easy pickings.  For this reason, it appears increasingly likely that as long as their media platforms are given the time of day, they will recruit impressionable, terrorized minds.  It is that minority this book is about, and their literal devouring of each other is metaphorical.

Whether Aleksander has been genuinely targeted by the cancel mob, or that is a fictional backstory, I’ve no idea – I suspect he has indeed, for his grievance is passionate and venomous.  It is also laugh out loud entertaining.  In a Lord of the Flies or indeed, as the title suggests, Battle Royale concept, a group of the most infuriating, misguided and vicious virtue signallers are dumped together on an island and left to their own devices, defending their own wokeness at the mercy of a mob of their professionally offended peers.  Seeing the way they simply cannot stop themselves turning against each other is brutal, and would be laughable if it wasn’t such an important social commentary, and the consequences of these people weren’t affecting the day to day life of every one of us.  I sympathize with anyone who has been a victim of this mob, though when it comes to someone like Aleksander – the character of the book, that is – who self-professes as formerly far left, there is a particular sense of karma and justification for the more balanced rest of us.

I did enjoy this amusing, sardonic novella, and read it in one short evening.  There were times I felt that it was perhaps a little juvenile, such as the character names, but the whole point is that woke politics is a matter of puerile nonsense for the most immature, so I guess Aleksander might have been right to label them with the childish disdain they deserve.  Good on him; I’ll always support an author who stands up to the mob – they are few and far between, I feel.