This pitch-black debut, lurching from comedy of manners to grand guignol, will be catnip to fans of Saltburn
It’s sometimes said that all war movies, whatever their stance, end up being propaganda for war. In The Kellerby Code, a version of the argument is made about PG Wodehouse. “Propaganda for poshos,” one character says briskly when she sees the protagonist reading The Code of the Woosters. “Every book set in an English country house is an advert for a system that fucks everyone apart from the chinny cunts who live in them.”
Jonny Sweet’s debut novel, then, is very conscious of the tradition in which it stands. It’s a lurid black-comedy-cum-thriller about social climbing and murder in which Brideshead Revisited and Wodehouse are frequently and nudgingly referenced, and further back in the mix are The Great Gatsby, a dab of Patricia Highsmith and a lick of the Martin Amis of Dead Babies. Coming in the afterwash of Saltburn, it’s very on trend. Call it Brideshead gothic, perhaps.
