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'A British writer to be treasured' Independent on Sunday
'Mills's odd but wonderful books combine the language of a children's story and the strange dry humour of Harold Pinter… This is a writer [whose] apparent simplicity sends your imagination flying in a way that is magical and unique.' Daily Express
'A unique talent… Mills's novels are among the best and most original in recent English fiction.' Literary Review
'Magnus Mills is a genius…an extraordinary individual with a completely unique view of the world, who makes sense of it in totally unexpected and inexplicable ways. It's rare that you finish a book feeling so richly satisfied.' Big Issue
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Review
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Customer Reviews
It is an excellent examination of the human condition of never being satisfied with what you have and in trying to improve and abuse a rather idyllic situation, realising it can all come to an unforeseen end (or foreseen for the reader).
Having now read a few more of Mills' books, I seek comfort in identifying with his dry look at behaviour in society through his prose. His novels are written in the first person and the reader is never given the name or gender of the character whose point of view his novels are written from, which immediately transports you into that situation.
I definitely recommend this, and other novels by the same author, to those who enjoy people-watching and human idiosyncrasies.
The narrator—unnamed, as ever—is one cog in the machine that makes up the eponymous Scheme, driving a Univan from one depot to another delivering an unspecified product for an unspecified purpose and an unspecified wage. The scene is beautifully Mills-ian, unquestioning men at work in the company of other unquestioning men, never dwelling long enough with each other for characters to develop above a single identifiable trait; George delivers cakes as a sideline, Jonathan is in his first week, Arthur is the grumpy guardian of keys. The narrator—again typically—is also slightly marginalized: he feels uncomfortable in the communal canteen and in the early stages of the book is taken off of his regular run to make solitary timing journeys to Eden Lacey depot, prior to possible expansion of the scheme. Thus, when there is something of an uprising in his home depot (a clash of ethics between early swervers and flat-dayers) he misses it and, as ever, ‘plot’ is something that happens elsewhere.
This technique may be unique to Mills but its effects have been tried and tested in all his novels to date. Despite (or possibly because of) our narrator’s obedient reluctance to question or embellish, our imaginations run riot, trying to fill in so many gaps that we create a fiction all of our own. Then, when Mills casually drops in answers to some of our questions, we can find ourselves bowled over by nothing more than effortless simplicity. Just like we can never be sure who are the Hall Brothers in The Restraint of Beasts or why does Bryan Webb wear a cardboard crown in All Quiet on the Orient Express, it’s a long time before we figure out exactly what The Scheme is all about. Or, at least, that’s the idea.
And this is my main criticism of The Scheme for Full Employment: I never considered Mills to be running a mile ahead of me this time out; it’s all a bit obvious, and I guessed the twists. None of the characters are as bafflingly enigmatic as Michael Painter in Three to See The King, or Hodge in All Quiet, for example. None of the settings are as instantly eerie as any of the pubs in Mills’ first two novels and the parable at the heart of the story is not so provocatively told as it is in his third. What we get is almost a Mills novel by numbers: all the ingredients are there but some of the magic and mystery has evaporated, mainly through over exposure. This is still a book well worth reading; you’ll fly through it and enjoy every page, but though the breath of air Mills blows through the stuffy contemporary literature scene is not yet stale, neither is it as icy-fresh as it once was.
"The Scheme for Full Employment" is a grand program that, well, guarantees full employment. Eight hours' worth of work for eight hours' pay. Grand days await those who join the scheme, what with an easy job that pays extremely well and has lots of benefits and perks attached to it.
The Scheme relies on a network of depots/distribution centres, with all that goes with it: a mechanical, almost flawless organisation, workers for every kind of task (from key keepers to gate guards), and, obviously, van - pardon, UniVan - drivers wheeling some kind of materials to and fro, in an never ending merry-go-round of transportation.
As the book progresses we find out that nothing happens to the merchandise being carried... it simply gets carried around from depot to depot on and off UniVans. And, most strangely and comically, that the goods are, well, UniVan parts. Now how stranger can the book get?
I won't go into more detail about the plot, but I can't resists making a couple of remarks about the book and the style. Firslty, Mills uses many symbols but is sufficiently smart and unpretentious so he doesn't leave it up to the reader to find out what those symbols are; everything is cleverly explained leaving no room for doubt. Then, there are hardly any references to the outside world; whilst the reader knows for a fact that such people do exist, the fact is that the narrator only narrates about The Scheme. As a result, we are in a kind of 1984/Brave New World age of social transformation mixed in with a lot of human talent - or lack of it.
Whilst the ending could have been a little more creative it was such a... well, dead pan ending that it is quite in keeping with the rest. I loved this book so much that now I can't wait until the next Mills' novels!
'The Scheme' is a self-perpetuating plan to keep people in work - people drive vans and... Read more
I think he's one of the best current British novelists. Read more
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