Satin Island

Satin Island (2015), an avant-garde novel by English author and artist Tom McCarthy, follows the exploits of a man named "U." who is assigned to compile "The Great Report" for a corporation the protagonist refers to as "The Company." Satin Island received positive reviews and was short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Award.

U. is an anthropologist who presently works for a London consulting firm called the Company. He is tasked with compiling a comprehensive and far-reaching report on humankind so the Company can better target products to consumers. As an anthropologist, U.'s interest in the project is more academic. He hopes that his work on the Great Report will reveal truths about humanity and society.

At the beginning of the novel, U. is in Turin, Italy waiting for a delayed flight. He reveals few details about the Company except to say that it is among numerous organizations worldwide committed to the Koob-Sassen Project. U. cannot or will not explain the details of the Koob-Sassen Project except to say that it has impacted the reader's life in numerous and significant ways. The Project, he says, is designed not to be noticed. It would, however, be noticed if it were to suddenly disappear.



Back in London at the Company's headquarters, U.'s boss Peyman urges him to continue his work on the Great Report. Despite the fact that the work interests him as an anthropologist, U. suffers from writer's block and hasn't written a word yet. This is in part due to the pressure he feels at having received such a special assignment from Peyton. Moreover, U. is supposed to be working on the Koob-Sassen Project too.

At one point, U.'s girlfriend, Madison, also waited for a delayed flight in the Turin Airport. However, despite U.'s repeated attempts at prodding her for information, Madison refuses to reveal why she was in Turin. This tension is revisited throughout the novel.

Rather than focus on compiling the report, U. can't stop thinking about the case of a parachutist who died when his parachute didn't open. Authorities rule the death a murder after determining that someone tampered with the man's parachute, ensuring that it would not open. When he is not researching parachutes, U. completes a little work on the Project, though he still refuses to reveal the nature of the work to the reader. Peyman's lieutenant, Tapio, notices that U. is studying parachutes instead of working on the Project. U. explains this by arguing that parachutes and the Project have a lot in common. Both of them, he goes on, are ways of getting someone from Point A to Point B. However, Point B isn't important. What is important is how you get there and the transition between the two points.



Finally, Madison reveals to U. why she was in Turin. She was a protester at a G8 Summit in Italy, along with her boyfriend at the time. After witnessing many acts of police brutality, she was kidnapped to a mysterious villa where she was forced to pose like a Classical Greek statue while an older man shocked her with a cattle prod. Later, she was released for no reason she can discern. She then flew home out of the Turin Airport.

In a dream, U. is flying through the air. Below him, he sees an island with abandoned factories and a massive pile of burning trash. The place is called Satin Island. The dream confuses him, but he feels obsessed with discerning its meaning. At work, U. is told that the Project is a wild success. As one of its architects, U. is showered with praise. Deciding that the Great Report is an impossible task, he abandons it.

U. travels to New York where he is assigned to deliver a speech about the Project and its success. While there, he debates taking the ferry to Staten Island because of its name's resemblance to Satin Island. He wonders if maybe it, too, is a place of abandoned factories and burning garbage. At the last second, however, he decides not to get on the ferry.



Although the author's use of repetition and indecisiveness can be frustrating in a narrative sense, they feed into the book's broader themes about transition and the difficulty of getting from Point A to Point B without falling to one's death like the parachutist.