The life of Christie, a young accountant who is dissatisfied with his life but wants to be close to money, turns into a madcap novel that mixes the workings of society and politics in 20th century England and hypocritical religious discourses with black humor.
Christie Malry was on her way home from Tapper’s office at the end of a long day, most of it spent shoving bits of paper into various machines, contemplating the extraordinary symmetry of the Double Register. For what follows, I think it would be good to take a walk through Christie’s mind, but since you all know very well in whose mind the events actually take place, let’s call it more of an illusion of a walk through.
Christie Malry is a straight person. She takes a job in a big bank at the age of seventeen because she needs to earn money. The dreary work environment and the relationships at work make Christie grumpy. As time passes, she decides to take evening classes to learn accounting and change jobs instead of spending years in the same bank, in her comfort zone, waiting until she is old enough to retire. He begins to use the double-entry method he learned in accounting classes to deal with the world in his personal life. From now on, everything that bothers him in his daily life, everything that puts him in trouble, he will identify with the double-entry method – that is, by keeping accounts receivable and payable accounts. But with a new workplace, new friends and plans for revenge, the calculations get complicated.
“The future of the novel depends on people like B.S. Johnson.”
Anthony Burgess
“One of the most gifted writers.”
Samuel Beckett
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B.S. JOHNSON was born in Hammersmith, England, in 1933, the only child of a working-class family. He left school at the age of 16 and worked as an accountant for a construction company and a baker, and as a trainee in a bank. In the evenings, he taught himself Latin and attended a university preparatory course, which qualified him to enter King’s College London in 1956. After graduating, he worked as a teacher. On the side, he wrote novels, often highly personal and experimental. He won the Gregory Prize in 1963 for his first novel, Traveling People. In 1960s Britain, he became associated with a circle of writers including Alan Burns, Eva Figes, Rayner Heppenstall, Ann Quin, Stefan Themerson, Wilson Harris. He later settled in North London, where he lived until his death in 1973.
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FİRDEVS EV was born in Izmir in 1990 and graduated from Boğaziçi University, Department of Political Science and International Relations. Her first book of short stories, Look at the Ceiling, was published in 2022. Her relationship with literature continued with collective platforms such as Kırtıpil and Text Experiments Space, which she established in addition to her own production. She worked in the fields of culture and arts, publishing and communication, and wrote review articles. She works at a higher education institution in Istanbul and translates from English and German.
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Book Title: Christie Malry’nin Dünyayla Hesabı (Christie Malrys Own Double Entry)
Author: B.S. Johnson
Translation: Firdevs Ev
Publisher: Can Publications
Array: Modern
Genre: Novel
Page Count: 136
