IN HIS collection of short stories The Rebel’s Sketchbook, Rupert Dreyfus comes across more as athlete than author, with adrenalin-fuelled sprints of extreme creativity and screaming anger at the injustices of contemporary society and the predicaments of his protagonists.

By contrast, Spark struggles for pace and energy over the middle distance of the standard novel format and those who were thrilled by The Rebel’s Sketchbook might be perplexed by this book, actually his first published work, which has been reissued.

The opening chapters are certainly arresting and original. Jake Miller has just been shot as a suspected terrorist and, between bouts of listening into the arresting policemen’s confused and plaintive conversations, he recalls the events that brought him to this parlous state.

Yet, later, Dreyfus seems to weary and run out of breath as the dialogue and plot stumbles and trips in the central chapters. This may be partly down to a lack of editing, despite the fact that Dreyfus is all too good at describing the banality of working in a corporation and grimly describes lives lived precariously on the borders of poverty and madness.

The context of Spark is similar to that of The Rebel’s Sketchbook in that Jake is one of the working poor, a “script bunny” — hacker — newly employed by Dynasty Bank.

Yet he can’t afford to rent anywhere to live except the down-at-heel Sloane Mansions. Owned by the unhinged scam artist Vinnie, they’re also inhabited by the gentlemanly Plato, a literate and philosophical drunk.

Hoodwinked in love and at work by Vinnie and, crucially, by the latter’s girlfriend, Jake’s response to the all-encompassing lack of hope in his life is to launch cyber attacks against the British government.

Yet these acts of individual dissent and a growing messianic tendency, while generating him a vast international but dependent virtual fan base named Generation Y-bother, still leave him lonely and isolated and, eventually, full of bullets.

Dreyfus has an assured comic touch and he’s good at picking at the scabs of contemporary alienation — before he unleashes his final digital revenge, Jake’s chat with the Samaritans is both funny and poignant.

But, as events whirl out of control, Spark leaves the reader ultimately feeling isolated and less hopeful than at the novel’s beginning.

Individual action, instead of collective endeavour, is always sterile — even if it succeeds. Digital utopian trickery, divorced from real life, means that to overthrow capitalism is a mirage.

The last pages, tinged with sentimentality, are moving. But the fact remains that Spark is not what’s needed from revolutionary literature in these desperate times. A tougher and more realistic approach is needed to show the state we’re in and what we must all do to change it.

Available for £11, including p&p, from rupertdreyfus.co.uk
Paul Simon