Dave's Book Blog: "We Live Here Now" by C D Rose

Tuesday, 26 May 2026

"We Live Here Now" by C D Rose

Winner of The Goldsmiths Prize in 2025, this remarkable novel is made of fourteen sections, each recounting strange occurrences. Many of the characters appear in more than one section, sometimes as principals and at other times as walk-on parts, or even mentioned but not present. Delightfully, the chapter headings across the top are printed so they fade away. The page numbers sometimes appear in different places. The whole thing is remarkably Kafkaesque.

In the first, written as a review article for an art magazine, the career of a performance artist who has gone missing is assessed; those who worked with her seem to be cursed. There are ambiguities and gaps in the record, the main source for the story may be an unreliable narrator. The work is described thus: "You can walk in, and it seems as if there are fewer of you, as if the person you are with isn't really there." (We live where now?)
In the second, Kasha, an art agent, loses a piece of art before tracing it to a shipping container.
In the third, Rachel Noyes, who records sound, is on her own in a flat in a strange town waiting to be interviewed for a job.
In the fourth a ship carrying a cargo of shipping containers experiences strange happenings aboard; the captain is the brother to a collaborator with the performance artist in the first section and the Dynamic Positioning Officer comes from South Uist.
Death #47, the fifth section, is about a man who has, so far, died 46 times, although he has always survived. So far. "His whole life had been a dérive" (I am fascinated by the concept of the dérive as promulgated by Guy Debord and the Letterist International.)
In Commission, Ryan, a photographer, is commissioned to create a portrait of a multimillionaire whose company makes cables and owns container ships.
Thomas Vyre, whose father once worked on South Uist, has had his identity stolen. Five times. So there are six of him, one of whom knocks at his door.
Sweeney is perpetually on a train, all the subway systems in the world, which somehow interconnect.
Ton, a composer, has become obsessed with a video of some Russian teenagers climbing an immensely high building; this section links with the one about Rachel Noyes.
Joe, an actor, is making an experimental film (Rachel is the sound technician) on South Uist where there is a container is a military base.
Jen works on the night desk for apartments reserved for guests.
Silas, friend of Kasha, attempting to launder money he has earned by selling drugs, buys and sells artworks ... and makes even more money that he can't bank.
In the penultimate section many of the characters assemble for a talk by Lukas Lemnis, art philosopher extraordinary.
The books ends with a comeback show entitled Klein Bottle, which might be significant, reported again by Che Horst-Prosier, who wrote the first section.

Having written all that, I realise that I have given almost no idea of what this book is about. I have almost no idea of what this book is about and trying even to describe the sections (without spoilers) is impossible. That seems to fit. This is a book which needs rereading again and again, to properly understand the interconnections. It is highly experimental and immensely interesting. It reminded me of M John Harrison's The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, another worthy winner of the Goldsmiths Prize. I must read more of this author's work.

Selected quotes:

“Kasha knew her job was to blow the smoke and polish the mirrors.” (It is what it isn't, we are where we aren’t)
“That was what she did. She got away with things.” (It is what it isn't, we are where we aren’t)
“‘This is just impostor syndrome’, she told her brain, but then realized it couldn't really be Impostor syndrome because that was when one falsely believed one wasn't actually up to the task, and Kasha knew full well that she wasn't up to the task. She couldn't have the syndrome if she actually was an impostor.” (It is what it isn't, we are where we aren’t)
“Kasha remembered the time Silas had told her to read Kafka, ‘because, actually, it's fucking hilarious’. She hadn't found it hilarious. She thought it was realistic.” (It is what it isn't, we are where we aren’t)
“Kasha walked out and dug around in her bag to find a Lavender Kalm. They made her burps taste like an old lady's bathroom but it was the best she was going to be able to get right now.” (It is what it isn't, we are where we aren’t)
“No echo, only that short sucking noise, as if the sound was trying to hide itself before it even registered.” (Every echo is a leak)
“The tangerine sky of the early dawn.” (Manifest)
“As soon as Oreste Lauro had stepped out of that pub he knew he was about to die, again.” (Death #47)
“Thomas knew that every Echo was a leak, a clue, a map of space.” (Six versions of Thomas Vyre)
“When he tried to remember the past, which he sometimes did, Sweeney believed only that he had been there forever, and would forever be there.” (Ich Verstehe Nur Bahnhof)
“Sweeney knew that history emerged from geography.” (Ich Verstehe Nur Bahnhof)
“Sweeney knew that the spaces between the signs, the gaps and the lapses, were as important as the signs themselves.” (Ich Verstehe Nur Bahnhof)
“Echo and drone, drone and echo.” (Crazy Russian Kids Climb Old Soviet Tower.)
“The sound of their youth crackling with potential. Their mortality was as nothing to them. It flew distantly above them, giddy, drunken. Death was just another one of their mates, the slightly crazed one who none of them would trust that much, the one with a bit of a cracked look in their eye, the one they all knew was having trouble at home.” (Crazy Russian Kids Climb Old Soviet Tower.)
“She realized she'd imagined a den of louche and opulent decadence, a secret boudoir rich with bosky perfumes and the potential for debauchery. Instead she found the executive suite of a mid-range ring-road hotel.” (Contract)
“Everyone was doing the art look. No one was looking at each other. They were looking for someone who might be more interesting.” (Chicago Typewriter)
“We were very much against physical space but then we realized we had to rethink space, territory, consider what it could be, project it into a future - I mean, it's like space, isn't it? And you can't give up on that? On the body. We all have bodies, don't we?” (Chicago Typewriter)
“Che Horst-Prosier was telling Kasha Hocket-Baily why a container ship was the perfect exemplar of a Foucauldian heterotopia.” (Chicago Typewriter)
“To us, a Klein bottle looks like a fancy vase in which it would be impossible to put any flowers, or a trick wine glass from which you are tantalisingly unable to drink, or a Murano version of a twisted doughnut, or a Möbius strip, or the universe itself, crafted by a particularly talented glass blower.” (Klein Bottle: the Comeback)