The Encouragement of Others 
Magnus Mills, Quoqs, £9.99

MAGNUS MILLS is on a roll. The Encouragement of Others is one of his finest books.

Mills is a working man, and he writes about workers. His first novel, The Restraint of Beasts, was about labourers who erect fences; The Scheme for Full Employment was about delivery vans; and The Maintenance of Headway was about bus drivers. These are all jobs Mills has done himself and the worlds he makes of them are enclosed and entire. But his books are about far more than they appear to be.

Or perhaps they aren’t.

Mills’s books can be taken as allegories — stories that represent other, hidden stories, samizdat commentaries on the ways we are now.

Or maybe not. 

Mills gives no confirmation that such meanings exist, or clues to what they might be. 

His characters seem bewilderingly everyday. But the plots, though microscopically minimal, are bizarre, like dreams that could become nightmares. And the wide-open spaces of his sparse writing style enable frequent glimpses of these other stories beyond and behind, giving the text a real richness: descriptions of the current state of the British mind; the history of England; the structures of consciousness itself.

Or possibly they don’t.

The Encouragement of Others’ echoes Mills’s second novel All Quiet On The Orient Express in beginning with the arrival in a picturesque northern English landscape of an unnamed stranger from elsewhere, this time on a small sailing boat. 

Though quite content to meander between secluded bays, he allows himself to become the passive tool of a man called Jenkins in his scheme to create a mass-ownership New Standard Sailing Dinghy. This initiative develops in some kind of relationship with the two mysterious local pubs, The White Swan, which is always full (the clientele seeming unable to leave) and The Black Swan, usually deserted and serving only two beers, Special and Reserve, which are actually the same beer sold over different counters.

The deadpan writing can frequently make you laugh out loud. Here is how the book begins: “This your first time in the north, is it?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “I’m new here.” “Thought so. You’re from the south then?” “Not really, no.”

This exchange repeats throughout the book. The protagonist reflects that “the locals only distinguished between ‘north’ and ‘south.’ They seemed to have no concept that there was anywhere else in between.” 

One of those with whom he has frequent dealings, an “inspector of works,” comments: “And before you came here I expect you heard that we all live in tiny back-to-back houses surrounded by blackened mills, slag heaps and smoking chimneys?” “Along those lines, yes,” I said, “but plainly I was misinformed.”

“Indeed you were. As a matter of fact the north is a bastion of prosperity. Such are the resources that hardly anybody needs to work. Those of us that do tend to regard our occupations as a kind of paid hobby. The rest pursue leisure on a full-time basis.”

Mills is not, then, writing of actually existing England.

Or perhaps he is.

This is a place where identity defines itself in terms of what it is not, that finds its pride in not being somewhere else, losing the facets of its own past while resentfully referring to it. And that dream/nightmare feels particularly familiar. In such ways Mills lets you conjure your own story from his words.

Or perhaps he doesn’t.

What is The Encouragement of Others really about? I don’t know yet. But I strongly recommend you read it yourself and find your own story.