Oy yoy oy. Ay yay yay, my friends. This is a smashing, extraordinary, heart-stopping, brilliant book. This is real literature. This Farrell guy writes with the precision of Chekhov and the profoundness of Dostoyevsky. Of course, he also had to go and die in a stupid fishing accident in 1979 at the age of 44. I don’t even want to think what else he could have created had he lived because his was a once-in-a-generation talent. What a terrible loss.

The novel is set during the Indian Mutiny, and it’s an ode to the British culture and a story about how a horrible calamity brings out of people. . . absolutely nothing whatsoever. People stay exactly who they are, and that’s both terrible and wonderful.

Farrell’s sense of humor is truly British. His characters are as memorable as Dickens’s and his dialogues flow like Jane Austen’s. I don’t know why he isn’t better known because if the UK produced a better writer since Farrell died, I have no idea who it could be.

It’s so so good omigod please just read it already I can’t even omigod it’s impossibly wonderful.

I can’t believe the existence of something this perfect has been concealed from me until now.

Ghosting is code for “I want all people except for myself to be easily discardable and willing to be used and thrown away.”

“I’m a special cookie and you are less valuable than a Kleenex” is the default neoliberal worldview. If you’ve been following the West Elm Caleb drama, this way of thinking is in full view. The abandoned damsels who pride themselves on going through guys like a smoker in a windy street goes through matches are incensed that a guy copy-pasted playlists and messages he sent to a large cohort of female dates.

It’s normal and healthy to see oneself as special, precious, and deserving of the best. Where the system breaks down is where people become incapable of noticing that everybody else feels just as special and unique.

True, they weren’t. But the reason why vaccine trials weren’t designed to test efficacy against infection was that it was completely obvious from the vaccines’ mechanism of action that they couldn’t possibly do anything about limiting infection and spread. Nobody tests a car to find out how effectively it can knit. Because it’s obvious it can’t. A car is designed for a different purpose.

I detest Big Pharma more than most but this, honestly, isn’t Pharma’s fault. People need to learn to be responsible for their own health. We already have an opioid epidemic because tens of thousands of gullible individuals took the most addictive drug in existence just because it was prescribed.

Life doesn’t work that way, my friends. The ultimate responsibility lies with us. If you were surprised to find out that COVID vaccines don’t stop infection and spread, you need to rethink your healthcare strategy.