Like most people, I think, I was very much intrigued by the premise of book, while also harbouring reservations about the potentials offered by such a premise.

Having found an 18th century advert asking for someone to volunteer for an experiment in social deprivation, and a later short report that one such volunteer had been found, with a quick description of his apartments, Nathan had very little to go from to write her novel. This would have been both challenging and freeing, I would expect.

Despite limited "action" the book is very well paced and Nathan makes good use of language to help with her already superb characterisation. The narrative deals mostly with domestic events and intimacy (or lack there of), while the grand conflagrations of French Revolution and the English Radical movement reverberate in the background.

Page 257 includes a quote by John Locke (from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding) that goes: "they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles." There is indeed much of that sort of erring happening throughout the book.

In the end, the author produced a thoroughly compelling and engrossing tale, one that brushes on many themes (ethics, class, patriarchy, mental health, lack of empathy, self-delusion) very relevant to our own time.

All those big themes make this a vastly ambitious book, which, I felt, fell short of fully realising that ambition. As mentioned, Nathan touches on many themes but she seems to constantly shy away from scratching more than their surface. Warlow's experience, in particular, is, by dint of who he is and the way Nathan gives him a voice, very sketchy and could have done with better exposition.

And after much wreckage, the book comes to its nihilistic ending and it feels as if things haven't changed that much by the time we reach that final sentence. I was left wanting a definite conclusion (in the sense of inference) to the book, which feels incomplete; more illustrative than a real attempt to flush new ideas.

Reading this after five months of near complete isolation, following the Coronavirus pandemic, gives the central theme of isolation even more preponderance but, again, the book didn't feel particularly enlightening in that respect either.

Perhaps I am missing the point, after all, or I am simply asking too much. The Warlow Experiment remains a unique and rich piece of writing, that is certainly worth a read.

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I was asked to photograph a showcase event, where Nathan read and was interviewed about the book. This is how a came across it.