Thoughts after reading

[Matthew]

Quite a strange book this one and not just the talking animals concept. I’m interested in animal welfare and the issues surrounding sentience, but I was aware before I started that the book wasn’t necessarily all about this topic and instead branched into other tangential areas. Nevertheless I think overall I was a little disappointed with the execution. A few other reviewers have pointed out that Graham dominates the story. I agree with one that stated “we are left following the lonely ramblings of a disagreeable old man in the woods”, a concept that isn’t in itself a problem, but wasn’t the story I wanted from this book. The Betes and their development are on the periphery of the story and I would have preferred them to be centre stage, their characters challenging the concepts of sentience and identity and consciousness. I wanted to be moved by the book but all we’re really given as an emotional centre is Graham who does get a little tiresome. In this approach it reminded me, if you’ll forgive the terrible reference, of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. Not in their equivalent artistry as the films are atrocious, but in that the humans are centre stage in both and they aren’t all that interesting. The story I want from a Transformers film is big robots hitting each other, not a sweaty Shia LaBeouf shouting about cars and girls. Likewise, in Bete I wanted a story of animals that are given a voice, not an angry farmer who loses his job and lives in a forest for a bit. That story was well told and well written, but wasn’t the one I wanted to read.

[Victoria]

But Bete isn't the story of animals that are given a voice at all, as aren't they just the creepy vehicles for a collective human-created cybernetic consciousness? Or am I falling for Graham's own rhetoric?

I was quite intrigued by following Graham's viewpoint, as all sorts happens 'off-screen', especially when he is in the woods - it becomes clear little by little that he is missing great swathes of The Point and his unconvincing and somehow puny (to me, unless I'm just hard-hearted?) attempt to fall in human love is naturally overshadowed by the much more massive questions of existence and politics that the Lamb and its interactions with the humans raise.

Graham's kneejerk and un-nuanced understanding gives us some of the biggest insights into what is actually happening - I'm thinking of the moment when he stupidly muses out loud that it's like "that scene in Skyfall", which is a bit annoyingly pop-culture referential (but there are loads o distractingly annoying bits like that in the novel) but at least it lets us know how the balance of power and trust sits in the much wider scheme.

There must be other stories... I can't think of one... where the 'main action', which is clearly the betes and the sci-fi dystopian premise, is glimpsed around the edges of the dislikable anti-hero through whose flawed interpretation we're attempting to glean what is really going on. Graham is just as much an examination of humanity in its ugliness as the betes, as much as we can understand of them, are an examination of hybrid digital consciousness and the morality of sentience. I'm not sure what I think or what I am meant to think, but maybe with a few more reads I would crystallise a more nuanced opinion of Graham himself and through that, decide on my opinion of the betes scenario through my assessment of Graham's attitude. I think that's what I think I think is going on, I think...

[Matthew]

It did put me in mind of one of my favourite and utterly perfect Simpsons quotes – “When are they going to get to the fireworks factory??!!” – when a story heads in a completely different direction to the one the audience is primed for. Not that Bete is as bad as The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show, of course. But the story that develops away from the initial concept has to be just as intriguing otherwise the Milhouse in me gets annoyed.