Suffice it to say that the single voice of reason in Filth belongs to a talking tapeworm, who intermittently narrates from Robertson's small intestine. But you don't have to travel to Paris or Moscow for a good dose of moral decay and sexual deviancy. Readers of this book can sit back with a cappuccino and enjoy images of America's streets rife with drugs, prostitution, institutional cynicism, and hideous violence. And there's nothing like knowing we're the subject of a cosmic joke to chill the cockles. Airplanes fall from the sky.
Social order breaks down.
The city streets are filled with trash, excrement, and corpses. Terror and hatred spread almost as fast as the White Evil, and many want to kill the afflicted to prevent further dissemination of the malady. But Boyle's apocalyptic vision is no less creepy for not being consummated. After all, an uninhabitable planet is about as nihilistic as you can get. One senses a sort of quiet glee from Beattie as she performs her emotional eviscerations, pointing out the polyps and cankers that fester beneath the thin skin of human relationships.