HappyHead

Sebastian Seaton, narrator of Josh Silver’s debut novel, is one of a hundred late adolescents (50 female, 50 male) selected to take part in the inaugural programme of the HappyHead Project. We meet him as he arrives at the Project’s purpose-built facility in rural Scotland.

The letter of invitation promises that the two week course will unleash Seb’s full potential, offering the opportunity to find enduring happiness. His Mum and Dad are delighted. It’s just what Seb needs, they’re sure; he’s always tended to lack self-confidence and this programme, conducted by highly-qualified experts employing assessments, therapies and non-medical interventions, sounds just the thing. Seb isn’t so sure but then, as he’d agree, he isn’t sure about anything much. And he does have a secret, which unfortunately his 15 year old sister has discovered and is quite willing to use to torment him.

The HappyHead programme is based on Dr Eileen Stone’s distinguished lifelong work with adolescents with mental health issues. She is convinced the present generation is suffering from the excessive demands of current society – notably social media, schools and exams – leading to a dangerous notion of what constitutes success in life. She has won generous government funding to implement a programme which, she believes, will lead to greater confidence, compassion and generosity. But Stone’s idealistic vision has been hijacked by senior members of the support team which has been provided for her by the authorities. By the time Seb’s course is to begin, the programme has been radically altered.

The novel follows the daily experiences of Seb and his fellow participants. All links to the outside world, including mobiles, are forbidden. As Seb is to discover, there is no escape; the estate’s perimeter fence is electrified. On Day One, each course member undergoes a procedure entailing an open cut to the chest and the implanting of a monitoring chip. Participants are grouped in fours – two female, two male. The assessments impose psychological and physical pressures, some of them acute. Individuals’ reactions are monitored and recorded by adult Assessors on their laptops. Bedrooms are numbered 1 to 100 and each day, participants are instructed to move to a new room, whose number reflects their current ranking on the course.

The programme is increasingly demanding, leading to activities which urge participants to form male/female couples – with increasing intimacy encouraged. This is desperately stressful for Seb, for the secret his sister discovered is that he is gay. Yet in this pressured circumstance, he cannot evade the hyper-competitive Eleanor, who targets Seb as a partner who might enable her to achieve the No.1 ranking she craves. Things are even more confusing for Seb since he is strongly drawn towards Finn, the other boy in his small group, and the only one on the entire course who openly rebels against the manipulation of mind and body to which the participants are subjected. What none of the course members yet knows is that the most suitable couples will not be returning to their homes; they will remain for further training, for the focus of those in charge of the programme is nothing less than practical explorations in eugenics. Though readers are given no confirmation, the  closing pages seem to demand a welcome sequel.

BfK readers might well think that a good proportion of the young adults they know would not be so readily compliant as almost all the HappyHead participants. But Josh Silver is a compelling storyteller, and the participants’ experiences often make for page-turning reading. Silver’s background as a trained mental health nurse allows him to make the formulaic language of the controlling adults chillingly convincing. Read as a dystopian fable, rather than a literal possibility, readers might well find the novel raises uneasy questions…. are there recognisable echoes  here of our own world?