The Transition

October 15, 2017
A hapless writer avoids jail time by signing up for a suspicious life-skills scheme called The Transition. Karl Temperley spends his days writing fake online reviews for products like the "Smart Fridge" and "a retro-look anti-SAD desk lamp." He and his wife, vulnerable primary school teacher Genevieve, scrape by thanks to a carefully orchestrated "seventeen-card private Ponzi scheme." Like plenty of real-life counterparts, Karl finds that his balancing act allows him to enjoy middle-class comfort despite crippling credit card debt. When Karl accidentally commits a crime "somewhere between fraud and tax evasion and incompetence," The Transition offers an easy alternative to a prison sentence. Smooth, futuristic, and cultlike, The Transition relaunches white-collar criminals and social screw-ups back into society with new homes and stylish careers. Karl and Genevieve are paired with "mentors," the successful, sexy Stu and Janna, who flirt, cajole, and coerce the couple into a simulacrum of adulthood: reading newspapers, budgeting, and exercise. Before long, the cracks in the scheme begin to show. What at first seemed generous--oversight from Stu and Janna, regulatory AA-like meetings--turns sinister and constrictive. A mysterious message carved onto Karl's bedframe sends him searching for answers, but will the quest alienate him further from Genevieve or land him in hot water with The Transition? Despite careful initial plotting and plenty of compelling character details, Kennard's imaginative satire begins to unravel as Karl seeks more information--and the destruction of The Transition. Karl's quixotic detective work prematurely accelerates the end of the novel, though fans of droll English commentary with a dystopian kick will find much to enjoy in this debut novel from an acclaimed British poet. A scathing romp about late capitalism's social ills.

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Starred review from October 23, 2017
Poet Kennard’s sharp, witty debut novel is about a generation who can’t seem to launch themselves into adulthood. In the near future, Karl, a debt-ridden 30-something, keeps afloat by using his useless English degree in morally dubious ways, writing fake five-star consumer reviews and “bespoke” essays for college students. When one of his writing gigs lands him in legal trouble, he is faced with a choice: serve a prison sentence or enroll, along with his blameless wife, Genevieve, into “The Transition,” a rehabilitation program aimed at rescuing “a generation suffering from an unholy trinity of cynicism, ignorance and apathy.” Opting for the latter, Karl and Genevieve must move in with Transition mentors, Stu and Janna, who counsel the younger couple on everything from financial responsibility and new career paths to personal hygiene and reading habits: “We want you both to read a newspaper.... A part of you still feels that newspapers are for grown-ups and that you’re not grown-ups.” While Genevieve excels under Stu and Janna’s guidance, the hapless Karl chafes against the cultlike aspects of the Transition and, after a series of often amusing transgressions, humiliations, and punishments, seeks to expose it as a less-than-benevolent self-help program. Enlivened by crisp dialogue and Wildean epigrams (“That’s the problem with self-respect...you start to feel offended when someone insults you”), the novel splendidly hums along. Kennard calibrates satire and sentiment, puncturing glib diagnoses of a generation’s shortcomings while producing a nuanced portrait of a marriage as precarious as Karl’s finances.

December 1, 2017

The Transition is a multinational organization that purports to get into order the lives of people who have stumbled into financial ruin--people like protagonists Karl and Genevieve, who are offered this six-month program in lieu of jail. They are moved into the house of "mentors" Stu and Janna, who seem sincere enough but exhibit a notably creepy vibe. Karl is insecure and extremely protective of Genevieve, who is bipolar, medicated, and prone to fugue states. With profound doubts about the program, Karl falls into immediate disfavor, while the beautiful Genevieve seems to flourish. Only Karl recognizes that Stu and Janna are driving a wedge between him and Genevieve. While Karl tries to bring down the empire, the mentors get Genevieve a job and even wean her off her medications. At first, she excels, but disaster soon ensues. The writing is deft, and there is humor but always under a cloud of ominous possibilities. It's a cautionary tale, to be sure, supportive of the idea "if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't." VERDICT A somewhat lighter and more contemporary 1984, with a corporation subbing for a government.--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

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November 1, 2017
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This is a lesson Karl Temperley learns the hard way in Kennard's biting debut, an intelligent satire about our collective future. Karl and his schoolteacher wife, Genevieve, are in deep debt, and Karl's work as a lowly freelance writer is certainly not going to rescue them from the hole they find themselves in. So when a program called the Transition promises them true financial nirvana in exchange for being mentored by a successful couple, the Temperleys desperately sign on the dotted line. Unfortunately, the fine print contains alarming stipulations. Worse, things get surreal and bizarre, and Karl, who feels increasingly responsible for the couple's sorry state of affairs, finds that things are not quite as they seem. Is it all a social-engineering experiment from which there is no escape? The narrative, with touches of the Black Mirror series, launches with a promising start but loses its bearings in the thickets. Nevertheless, Kennard's gift for dialogue and fluent imagination are surely signs of promising things to come.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)