Noah Hawley’s ANTHEM sends a grim warning to older generations

Noah Hawley, creator of TV’s Fargo, sets his latest novel Anthem in a near future where children are committing suicide en masse and America is on the brink of civil war. Teenagers break out from a psychiatric facility to rescue a girl from a billionaire paedophile, as a patchwork of interwoven characters confront a country spiralling into chaos.

This vision of a crumbling America is startlingly well-realised. Climate change, conspiracy culture, the spectre of Trump (referred to throughout as the ‘God King’): Anthem’s near future is believable, and detailed. An elderly pair of QAnon-followers, an opioid-pushing pharma boss and alt-right soldiers in clown make up – a litany of America’s worst – all make an appearance.

Anthem jumps between timelines, characters and even Hawley’s own perspective. Characters crop up in other subplots; timelines are shuffled like cards during a magic trick. There are moments where the plotting gets a little cacophonous. The timelines aren’t always the most elegantly arranged, and the witty, televisual dialogue occasionally dampens the gravitas.

However, Hawley’s worldbuilding, richly-imagined characters and epic narrative mostly bulldoze through these minor faults. The book’s most bruising observation comes via a dark recurring joke. Throughout, the adult characters remain unable to understand why their children are so despondent and pessimistic, resulting in the blatantly-dire global situation failing to change. This is Anthem’s key call to arms: listen to your kids, they’re the ones reckoning with the mess you created.