We are inside a pre-biotic chemical reaction some 4,500 million years ago, as it suddenly forms a membrane and becomes a prokaryot cell. Then a eukaryot cell. Then a multicellular organism. That's for the first chapter, and from the cell's viewpoint." "Christine Brooke-Rose blends her well-developed narratorless technique with a drastic extension of a very ancient convention, that of lending words to creatures that have none, indeed have no consciousness, to move steadily through evolution to the earliest human species, ending some 3,000 years before agriculture and some 8,000 years before the earliest writing appeared.The novel begins thus: "Zing! discharging through the glowsalties the pungent ammonia earthfarts in slithery clay and all the rest to make simple sweeties and sharpies and other stuffs. Dust out of vast crashes and currents now calmer as the crust thickens and all cools a bit.Over many many forevers.Waiting. Absorbing. Growing. Churning. Splitting.Over and over."
