The Near Future

A painfully evocative novel set amid the bitter mundanity of a retirement village. The setting is a retirement community in Manatee, Florida - specifically, the doublewide on Dockside Lane. Gossip, pyramid schemes, early-bird specials, Santarria, silicone-haemoglobin oxygen exchangers are a few of the distractions of the ‘golden agers’ and their grandchildren who negotiate the imminent and the virtual. The characters are ordinary, genial and either hopelessly neutral or ever-so-slightly shady. They love one another, they cross one another, they cross the state of Florida together and together they double-cross themselves. Language and verisimilitude are Porter’s great gifts as a novelist. His language is clipped, colloquial, cunningly and humorously off-kilter. His phrasing and pacing are refined and strangely musical. He has a penchant for the short and nervous sentence.