I am torn with this book. I enjoyed it and thought it was excellently written and paced. The story drew me in but by the end I was a bit confused as to what was trying to be conveyed through the story. I don’t know how else to put it. I read a NetGalley version of this book.

I struggled with this brilliant book, and I am certain the deficiency is mine. I feel like an outsider
surrounded by brilliance, but I just don’t feel like the party is for me. Feeling enjoyment with
individual passages that intrigued me is not the same as feeling immersed in or changed by a
story.
My thanks to Random house via NetGalley for the download of this book for review purposes.

Incredibly funny and brutal social commentary with a little mystery thrown in. A not so subtle bashing of pundits, journalism, and British white upper class cosplaying as middle.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the e-arc!
Publication date: May 4, 2025

Universality is shaping up to be one of the standout books of the year! Natasha Brown's razor-sharp wit and knack for creating flawed but realistic characters make this novel an engaging read. Part mystery, part social commentary, Universality explores the messy intersections of wealth, privilege, and politics. The title speaks to humanity’s shared failings—greed, envy, and corruption—woven into both the literal and metaphorical fabric of the story. The theme of universality pops up throughout the book, tying everything together in a clever and thought-provoking way.

The plot follows a journalist as she investigates an illegal rave gone terribly wrong, with a man ending up dead from a blow with a solid gold bar. As she digs deeper, she uncovers a tangled web of relationships that cut across social classes. The story is split into five distinct sections, each pushing the investigation forward while shining a light on the societal cracks it exposes. Brown’s semi-satirical takes on capitalism, class, and media are brilliantly integrated into the characters’ lives without ever feeling preachy. It’s not your typical mystery, and while none of the characters are particularly likable, their complexity and relatability will stick with you long after you’ve finished.

This was a fantastic job in the genre and I enjoyed going through this book from beginning to end. It had that element that I was looking for and was invested in the characters and what was going on. Natasha Brown has a great writing style and I enjoyed what I read.

Universality might just be the book of the year. Is that year 2024 (when I read it) or 2025 (when it releases)? Not sure!

With razor-sharp wit, Brown crafts a cast of deeply flawed yet realistic characters. Universality is as much a social commentary as it is a mystery. Wealth, class, politics, and privilege all intersect to create an expertly woven tapestry of narratives. The title reflects humanity's universal shortcomings: greed, corruption, and envy. I loved the metaphorical and literal references to the theme of universality sprinkled throughout.

The novel follows a journalist’s attempts to uncover the truth after an illegal rave goes awry and leaves a man bludgeoned with a solid gold bar. As the journalist digs deeper into the story, she uncovers a complex web of relationships that span different social and economic classes. The novel is split into five major sections, each of which further explores the fallout of the investigation and the rising success of the journalist behind it. I wouldn’t quite describe this as a short-story collection or a true-to-form novel - it incorporates a bit of both to tell its story.

As with Assembly, Brown integrates plenty of semi-satirical remarks about late-stage capitalism, the gig economy, race, classism, and the rising popularity of right-wing media. Her writing has a level of nuance that’s hard to get right; the characters don’t feel like mouthpieces for commentary, but rather as fully realized people who embody the contrasting perspectives on current social issues. While nobody emerges as particularly likable, they all represent the collective apathy & nihilism of society and the divisive cultural war that the media perpetuates.

Something I appreciate about Natasha Brown is her ability to accomplish so much in such a minimal page count. The writing never feels bloated or superfluous, and the intent behind every sentence is evident. What she deliberately leaves unsaid is as important to the story as what it is presented. The best comparison I can make is to a painting where the negative space is just as much the focus as the positive space. It leaves room for interpretation and discussion in a way that I haven't seen other authors emulate successfully.

Assembly was a book I appreciated more than enjoyed, but Universality takes similar ideas and runs with them. It will leave you uncomfortable, reflecting and eagerly awaiting her next release. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC!

Thanks to Penguin Random House for the ARC of the novel.

In the acknowledgements for her new novel, author Natasha Brown calls <em>Universality</em> “this weird little book.” And I have to agree. It is a weird book in the sense that it is an unconventional novel in structure, and this unconventional structure allows for the revelation and development of the novel’s characters and themes in a seemingly disjointed fashion that kept me guessing as to who was the focus of the current section of the novel that I was reading. This is not meant as a criticism; in fact, I found the approach challenging in the way one is challenged when reading a really good mystery. Slowly, the black center of the novel around which the action swirls is revealed and then you look back and see that the black threads that lead to it were always there.

For such a short novel, it manages to explore some very contemporary issues like woke politics, extreme wealth, and the ever slippery notion of <em>truth</em>in a fairly thorough way. Information silos, outrage, and clickbait are explored, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit distressed with what I was reading. And perhaps that is the point of it all. There is a moment in the novel when one of the characters reflects that “It’s a strange thing, to achieve success and adoration, but without any real understanding” because her fans only want to hear sound bites and catchphrases; any attempt to truly explore the issues makes “eyes glaze over and yawns need to be stifled.” No one in this novel seems capable of achieving “real understanding” whether on personal matters such as marriage or large-scale issues such as immigration. They can’t seem to find common ground. Motivations are misunderstood, and words fail to convey <em>truth</em>. The characters talk at one another, argue, pontificate, yet never seem to come to agreement. Some of them say things that are truly (I think) terrible, and it is to Natasha Brown’s credit that she created characters who are very believable in their harsh worldview.

After finishing the novel, I couldn’t help but think that the title is meant to be ironic. Is universality possible? Given the current state of the world, can there ever be some true universal collective good that <em>everyone</em> can agree on? Or is Brown saying that our current state of perpetual outrage and disagreement at all levels of human communication is the true universality? Sigh.

The unbelievable tale of social class and wealth via the points of view of three very different voices. We start with a long article detailing the assault of a man (Pegasus) by another with a gold bar. The article becomes a fictionalized show for television and the author is highlighted in our next portion of the book. Also included in the banker, the owner of the gold bar and an atrocious man! Finally we round out with the dreaded Lenny, an equal opportunity misanthrope who is against "The Woke" and has found her place amongst the anarchists whose worldview has become more global and is now known as The Universalists!

The complex rendering and fitting of the points of view are a cat and mouse game all in itself. How Brown manages to create this world and so easily fall into the personal world views of so many others just blows my mind. This is a book you will be hearing about for a long, long time.

If you love a book about contemporary society, a book that is almost an ouroboros of itself, or just want to read some truly sharp and brilliant literature, Universality is for you!. #randomhouse #universality #natashabrown

Natasha Brown's UNIVERSALITY is at once about both a lot and almost nothing. It's about capitalism, it's about woke culture, it's about classism. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually interrogate or plant a flag into any of its intrinsic debates, and for that the book suffers.

I quite enjoyed the opening section - an article about a gold bar that was stolen off a farm and used as a weapon in an attempted murder. The young journalist who reports on the events is brought to the story through a tangled web, and reveals a lot of messy, juicy twists in the process. The book then goes on to tell chapters from a few characters connected to the article: the journalist herself, the gold bar owner, and the woman who gave the tip to the journalist about the story in the first place.

I wish every subsequent section had gone further at really poking the issues that the book brings up. Ultimately, it's a slim and shallow novel, as incoherent as the book itself accuses the lynchpin of being.

2.5 stars. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This was a pretty good book, but I do feel like there was too much going on at once and felt messy and not too thought out at times. I think it should have been less hectic and I would have enjoyed it more. It was just okay

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

I appreciated the author's debut, Assembly, more than I liked it. But her follow-up, Universality, true to its name, had more of an immersive, inclusive appeal.
The book can be described in deceptively simple way as the circumstances and aftermath of one man hitting another with a gold ingot. The beautiful thing about this novel is that there is nothing simple about it. The author expertly peels layer after layer to create a complex and oh-so-spot-on representation of the modern zeitgeist: wealth division, racism, xenophobia, privilege, wokeism, and all the rest.
The book is visceral, clever, brilliantly written, and difficult to put down no matter how repulsive its characters may come across. Each individual's perspective is presented in a such matter-of-factly way as to remind the reader that these people are all around us, that this is who you're sharing the world with, and their perceived evils and sins can be tragically, shockingly ordinary.
What's more remarkable is that the author managed to do all that well under 200 pages. And this is, in fact, considerably longer than her debut. Natasha Brown's writing is succinct but never sparse. And it's so impressive in this day and age of oversized books and a beautiful reminder that a novel can have a serious weight to it without doing so literally. For that alone, I'm uprating my review to all stars.
A great, thought-provoking, compelling read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

Immediately after finishing this book, I didn't think I'd enjoyed it very much. I open my notes & highlights, I've highlighted paragraphs on paragraphs on paragraphs - all of which still make sense to me, without complete context. That tells me I did, in fact, enjoy this. The first section, A Fool's Gold, was the standout to me; no surprise if you read my reviews often, as dissection of the 'mother' role is my kryptonite.

Across all sections of this book, Natasha Brown gives readers numerous opportunities to identify with the characters she creates. Written from a perspective of victimization, you navigate topics like sexism, classism, racism - a lot of the '-isms.

Admittedly, comprehending this took a lot more thinking that I'd anticipated. This wasn't a book I could coast through or give only partial attention to. That being said, I'm going to wait until I have a little more mental bandwidth before I dig into her debut, Assembly.

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Natasha Brown and Random House for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!}

The writing is sharp and clear, and really pulled me in. The opening chapter, which chronicles a surprising act of violence, was my favorite part of the story. I loved the structure of the novel-it is unexpected and engaging. There are lots of characters and provocative questions regarding truth, power, class, race that I don’t feel like were fully explored - however, the author packs an impressive amount of plot into five chapters. Recommended to anyone in the mood for a smart, through-provoking read that doesn’t offer easy answers.

Thank you very much to Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.

the majority of the novel feels like it doesn't really get to the point but it's by design. the beginning starts out with something wider: a young man is nearly killed by a gold bar at an illegal rave. then the novel gradually zooms in by following a journalist who wants to uncover the truth of this crime. i don't think brown sticks the landing but what i found most compelling was in how brown explored language and how there is something intuitive about constructing an argument that resonates. in particular, there's something intuitive about scientific process and how humans rely on this process to make sense of the uncertain. however just because the scientific process is utilized doesn't mean everyone will come to the same conclusion, but it's the act of relying on that sense of rationality that can be dangerous if left unchecked.

The book begins with a man almost killed after being struck by a solid gold bar at an illegal rave. In the aftermath, a young journalist begins to uncover the truth, drawing connections between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement that has taken up residence on the farm.

This short yet insightful novel is a character-driven narrative that is similar to the themes and captivating writing of Brown's debut, Assembly. However, the key difference is in the narrative structure. While Assembly is told from a single POV, Universality has multiple POVs. The first chapter initially felt a bit overwhelming with the introduction of numerous characters.

What intrigued me most about this novel, as highlighted in its synopsis, is its exploration of language, "the book focuses on what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean." At the beginning, the journalist is determined to reveal the truth of the events, a truth that I, as a reader, initially accepted. However, as we dive deeper into the perspectives of various characters, it becomes clear that each one posseses their own version of the truth, ultimately positioning themselves as victims in their own narratives. Significant themes throughout the book include the cultural wars within journalism, classism, and race, all of which contribute to its thought-provoking depth.