The entry requirements for society are an accepted set of rules that mostly no one spends much time thinking about. We just subconsciously enforce them.
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It doesn't take much for the rules to be challenged. What does society owe those who cannot contribute or cannot conform? We like to think we extend help to those who need it, but we also desire to keep our distance from those who we feel do not belong.
Society is a constant game of chance, where the participants constantly judge each other. Is this a good person or do they risk being bad?
Frida Isberg's novel The Mark forces one to consider the ramifications of being able to unequivocally answer that question.
In a future Iceland, psychologists have developed an empathy test. A public register allows those who pass the test to mark themselves. Members of parliament are early adopters. It doesn't take long for shops to only allow customers through the door who are marked. There are marked blocks of flats and marked suburbs. Soon, school students are required to take the test, and anyone who refuses finds their world shrinking around them.
A campaign is being fought over an upcoming referendum on whether to mandate the empathy test for all citizens of Iceland. The trade requires giving up more freedom for promises of greater security, because it will be easier to trust those around you. Anyone who fails the test has access to psychological support. But is it too much liberty to give up?
We set and analyse empathy tests for others all the time. How a person treats a dog, or children. How a colleague behaves around those less important than them. How do they react when they learn someone else's loved one has died suddenly? Does someone you know buy free-range eggs or do they sacrifice animal welfare for the cheaper carton of cage eggs?
These tests, whether we know we're setting them or not, are at the core of our social order, allowing us to decide, when the stakes are high and low, whether we let someone into our circle or keep them out.
When The Mark was first published in Iceland in October 2021, it drew immediate comparison with the debate then raging about COVID vaccine mandates. Governments and their health authorities expected, and nudged, the populations for which they were responsible into taking up vaccines to halt the worst effects COVID. Those who did - the majority - were marked as good. Those who didn't found each other, and their world shrinking around them.
The Mark follows a group of characters through the referendum campaign. A teacher struggles with PTSD after being stalked by her former partner; his failure of the test, she believes, will keep him at bay. A young man's future looks bleak - he's caught already in the beginnings of a life of crime; he doesn't want to take the test. A high-flyer in the world of finance knows she will not pass the test; if she does take it, her career will be in jeopardy. A psychologist pushes for the test mandate vote to pass while his own marriage crumbles.
Each character has a distinct voice in Isberg's novel, which has been translated into English by Larissa Kyzer. The author and translator are long-term collaborators, resulting in a whip-smart translation into English.
But there is a political ambiguity at the heart of The Mark, it seemed to me. Here is political fiction that doesn't seem to want to push one point of view.
"In the novel, I wanted to make it hard to choose one side as correct and dismiss the other ... so I asked each of my characters to try their best to convince me," Isberg recently told PEN Transmissions.
Each of the characters is variously convincing and unconvincing. Their reasons are sometimes solid and sometimes contradictory. In parts, anyone who plans to vote against the mandate is a heartless individual who would think there is no such thing as society. And in other parts, anyone who insists on voting for the mandate is a heartless individual who fails to see beyond the illusory bubble of safety they self construct around them and their families. This is even more powerful when one is reminded how small and homogenous Iceland is.
Political points of view are rarely impervious to argument. They are biased, corruptible, feeling-induced and sometimes irrational. That's true even when we are right.
The ambiguity that had first annoyed me about the novel is what I came to see as its strength. Isberg has written a dangerous book, one which dares to suggest we must navigate the middle ground between ardently held positions if we are to make society function. A position must not be assumed to be a given and societal support not made conditional. The set of choices permitted to a society's citizens is the critical question of how well it shall function.
The distance between what gets marked as good and bad is not long, but the space between is significant.
- The Mark by Frida Isberg. Translated by Larissa Kyzer. Text Publishing, 304pp. $34.99.
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Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
