Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
Review [published January 2000]
Michael Marshall Smith: Spares
Antony Johnston
They say never judge a book by its cover, but the sheer
ubiquitousness of Spares (with its oh-so-cool spotvarnished,
blurry-type cover) inclined me to think it
was the sort of bestselling ‘new fiction’ which generally
leaves me cold. Fortunately for me, a friend had
already read it and liked it so much that she bought
everyone a copy for Christmas. Am I glad she did.
Jack Randall is an ex-soldier. Recovering from a
military experiment which went horribly wrong (but is
not detailed until the closing stages of the book, and
even then not fully), Jack took a mundane police job
in New Richmond, a grounded MegaMall – picture
a flying cuboid city, five miles square. His wife and
child are subsequently horribly murdered. This sends
Jack into a paranoid psychotic episode which sees him
eventually working as a maintenance man on a Spares
Farm with only the local droid for company.
Spares themselves are a logical but hideous concept –
clones of those wealthy enough to afford them (the trend
is for having your children cloned as ‘insurance’), grown
and kept as very literal spare parts, to be hacked up and
used as donors when said offspring has an accident.
The moral quandary which Smith highlights, quite
apart from the issue of whether or not the Spares should
have rights as human beings, is the inherent lack of
responsibility that comes with such a safety net. The
rich kids are almost incapable of learning from their
mistakes, as the consequences are never drastic. Lost
both legs in a car accident? Hey, no praahblem – just
chainsaw a couple off of one of your Spares (no anaesthetic
required), stitch ‘em on, and within a week you’ll
be zipping round at 200kph again.
All of this is background – the book starts after all
this, including Jack’s subsequent breakout from the
Farm, has occurred. Luckily, with such a wealth of
background plot to cover, Smith’s exposition is understated
and conversational, a personal preference of
mine. Rather than ham-fistedly inserting great wads of
flashback and explanation, Smith only elaborates on
background when relevant, and then in a fairly offhand,
matter-of-fact manner. This is not an author who underestimates
his audience’s ability to piece a story together
from fragments, and this can only be a Good Thing.
In addition to the problems encountered during his es-
BUY Michael Marshall Smith books online from and
482
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z