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Acid Song

Beckett, Bernard

Acid Song is a novel that explores the relationship between ethics and science. It's election day in contemporary New Zealand. From a staff-room argument about a playground fight, to a young father's confrontation with a teenage burglar, to a woman film director's footage of a campus protest, to a skinhead riot in Christchurch, to an hour's dancing at an inner city club: in every context, issues of race, politics and ethics push up viciously against each other. At the core of this simmering twenty-four hours is a piece of scientific research from a well-respected academic which appears to link IQ to race. Should he have gone public with it? How should he have framed his announcement? What is a scientist's duty to society? Will the knowledge bring any social good? Are the calls of racist a knee-jerk reaction? This tightly constructed, clever, darting novel from the author of Genesis confronts a controversial contemporary debate head on, and asks some uncomfortable questions.

Runner up for the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, Fiction category.

In this addictive, smart, wry yet sad, many-layered, utterly credible novel, (and his first for adult readers), Bernard Beckett calls on all his skills as a dramatist and man of ideas.

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