Under Construction Journal Issue 6.1 UNDER CONSTRUCTION JOURNAL 6.1 | Page 119

health there exists a more reciprocal, and healthier relation of inter-personal intertwined with physical
and psychic health, where Georgie gives us sweets, Bobby passes through acid to sweets to health, as
well as to communal housework. Yet there is also the threat of bourgeois atomization in the formation
of the couple 120 , relinquishing the collective in favour of a mode of measured ‘health’ limited to the
couple’s maintenance 121 exposing a need for a larger imaginary, as does the failure of one to fully arise
in the time since the novel’s writing. Thus, if we look at endings, for Acid there is a certain ambivalence
but also a ‘future-time’ from ‘now-time’ in evidence, a trend we may see in other texts (notably GW
Brown’s Ironopolis 2018 and its tale of Middlesbrough housing estate from the 60s to 2010, passing
through a fleeting, ambivalent acid community), as gesturings towards the future.
120
Maybe we could move out of this place’ he suggests, coming up for air […] I mean, we’ll need extra room for
the and that…we might have to get that fucking money off Johnnie , though; Bobby has a nervous twitch (2010,
286)
121
Georgie grinding black pepper onto and pouring on Caeser dressing (but not too much). Georgie’s been eating
incredibly healthily and somehow she’s got Bobby hooked on it too (2010, 283)
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