My First Brexit Novel

Middle England, Jonathan Coe

The first unambiguous Brexit novel that I've read. Running the better part of a decade, mostly before - but also after - the 2016 Brexit referendum, following about a dozen major characters in the approach and aftermath to this rolling, shambolic and toxic national tipping point.

In essence, it's a tragedy (obviously), leavened with many comic moments, and with a smidgen of hope at the end. Perhaps surprisingly, in spite of its subject the novel is a very enjoyable read, in part down to the recognisable, god-awful familiarity of the backdrop, but also Coe's skill with his characters and their narratives. He does a good job focusing on facets of England that illuminate the whole, for instance, a foodbank-using clown and a schoolgirl feud ultimately revealed as "immigrant" UK citizen vs. "native" Irish/EU citizen. He also weaves in an explicitly political strand, has a bit of fun with the literatti (his own tribe), and touches on our still-forming notions of gender. Which all sounds a lot, but it's never rushed, and it juggles these threads skilfully.

While told from a clear Remain perspective, doubtless reflective of the author (and his readers), Leave appears throughout the novel. Not, admittedly, always (ever?) in a favourable light, but my personal Brexit experience largely accords with Coe's handling of Leaver characters (though nowhere near as dramatically). There are doubtless missing Leaver perspectives, but an emphasis on xenophobia, and a minority role for tax-dodging elites, feels pretty reasonable to me.

As I understand it, the characters are drawn from previous novels by the author, but there didn't seem to be any requirement for familiarity with these. Although, based on this book, I will now be digging into his back-catalogue.

While, as noted, this is my first Brexit novel, I expect it's a portent of many more to follow. Something further to fill one with dread.

Music As Muse

Greetings From Bury Park, Sarfraz Manzoor

As a fan of Manzoor from his journalism and Late Review appearances, this had been on my radar for a while (it's not a new book, so quite a while). But it took bring prompted by the release of a fictionalised film of it to finally get my arse in gear (= press the right buttons on the Amazon website).

Presented as chapters with either a chronological or thematic narrative, it's primarily about Manzoor's early life in Luton, and his migrant family's struggles to adjust both to the endemic racism they encounter and to the intergenerational strains between parents raised in one culture and their children in another. Anyone paying attention to UK culture over the last 30+ years will be somewhat familiar with both, but with a book, Manzoor is able to explain and explore it much more deeply.

On which point, the film does make for a rather superficial take on Manzoor's family life, almost stereotypical in terms of migrant family bingo: tyrannical father, tick, subservient mother, tick, repressed sister, tick, etc. The book is far more nuanced, with Manzoor's father, in particular, afforded a much richer treatment. While he does initially appear as that "old country" tyrant, Manzoor's telling of his life, his striving for a better one for his family, and ultimately his achieving of some peace presents a more complete and sympathetic portrait.

In being richer, the book's less heavy on Bruce Springsteen than the film. He's important, but not a dominating gimmick. It's definitely a better balance.

Finally, as Manzoor and I are almost the same age, the book also serves up some enjoyable nostalgia of the 70s and 80s. And while I haven't experienced even a fraction of the strife and struggle that he has, his feelings of being far away from the centre of things were very familiar.

Definitely recommended.

Forged Apology

Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Lee Israel

Now, as its cover notes, "A Major Motion Picture", this slim memoir serves as an excellent - and delightfully acid - complement to the fine work of Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant.

For those unfamiliar with the tale, it's a memoir by the biographer Lee Israel of her foray into the forgery of celebrity correspondence. At a low financial ebb after a disastrously rushed biography of Estée Lauder, Israel almost accidentally blunders into this secondary career. Initially through the selling of embellished letters, she ultimately creates them wholesale, for writers including Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker (after whom the book draws its title). With some attention to detail, including period typewriters plus solid impersonation, as well as the insertion of wicked details, her work becomes a money-spinner within the dubious world of celebrity memorabilia. Inevitably, after the rise comes the fall, but not before a highly enjoyable reveal of the tricks of the trade. Israel is absolutely unrepentant in her telling, which makes for a gleeful read, though one that lightly glosses over the straightened circumstances that led her to crime in the first place.

Viewers of the film might be a little annoyed to discover its changes to certain details of Israel's story (most obviously around a feline character), but I think it stands up well despite these minor tweaks. And I'd simply never have read and enjoyed this delicious takedown of the lucrative celebrity memorabilia market / minor meditation on "getting into character" if I hadn't seen the excellent film adaptation first.

Imagining Climate Change

The Wall, John Lanchester

One of the many failures of our culture when it comes to possible climate change futures is in playing out the likely consequences of change. "The future" becomes one purely of temperature extremes, rainfall change and, sometimes, agricultural shortages. Numbers that, while meaningful, don't capture the imagination and aren't extrapolated to day-to-day changes in our lives. This makes the future look like somewhere in which we have to, for instance, make do on 10% less food and spend twice as much time indoors sheltering from excessive heat. This overlooks what such changes will actually mean societally, and how they will play out for the daily lives of people in different places on different means.

The Wall is, arguably, an attempt to put human flesh and feeling around one climate future. It's a relatively slim volume, and focused around a small cast, but it makes great strides in sketching out how climate change can reshape a whole society, and what consequences and choices it might impose.

The book opens, almost with sly nod to Game of Thrones, with its central character, Kavanagh, braced against the cold, up on the Wall and looking for Others. The Wall is Britain's response first to sea level rise, but more significantly to the waves of climate refugees displaced from their homes. Kavanagh's job, as a Defender on a two-year stint, is to stop the Others from breaching the Wall and reaching the relative safety within. In this future, it is the young that serve on the Wall, while the old, whose past inactions have caused the Change which drives it, are cowed and nostalgic for lost beaches. And this service comes with double jeopardy for the Defenders - the risk of harm while serving on the Wall, and the penalty of being cast out to sea if any Others break through on their watch. Both of which become more than mere risks for Kavanagh as his tour of duty unspools.

In spite of its relative brevity, this creates an unnerving future Britain. Through the drama it inflicts on its characters, it shows how, while civilization may not necessarily fall under climate change, its best features can easily be worn away. Kavanagh is a relatable Everyman, but even he stops himself thinking too deeply about the Others or why they are so desperate to break into Britain. However, his resentment at previous generations, including his own parents, for their abject failure to avoid the Change is much clearer. This future Britain may not be (completely) materially ruined, but the isolationism fostered by the Change, and the resulting loss of humanity in its citizens, marks its true devastation.

So not the cheeriest read, but recommended.

Stray observations:

• The climate future presented in the novel is an interesting one. The reader is first introduced to how cold it is, counter to ongoing global warming. However, it is later made clear that it’s much warmer elsewhere, which is suggestive of the cold in Britain being a result of changes in ocean circulation. The decline in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, for instance, is simulated to result in reduced warming in northwestern Europe relative to other locations. I don’t think that (m)any simulations would suggest strong cooling, but there’s something of a basis for the nature of the Change as it appears in the novel.
• A number of reviews have described The Wall as “this century’s 1984” or similar, presumably latching onto the fact that its future dystopia can be read as a warning for the present. And there’s certainly something prophetic in its world, but in terms of style and narrative the two books really don’t overlap. The Wall is far, far less didactic than 1984, and the better for it. The closer parallel is with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, with its similarly pared-back text and narrative, although The Wall gets the nod because its particular environmental calamity is more unambiguously related to our own. (The Road still wins out in terms of total doom, however.)
• In another sly nod, The Wall introduces a politician character with more than a passing resemblance to a certain British Prime Minister known for populism and lying. That said, the narrative ultimately gives him a more noble path than one might expect from this affinity, so perhaps I’m overinterpreting.
• Intriguingly from a “future technology” perspective, the Britain presented in The Wall runs off of nuclear power. It’s fleetingly mentioned, and never referred to again, so it’s difficult to know if the author means much by this. Admittedly, the changed local climate in Britain sounds less favourable to renewables like solar, but there could be more to this choice by the author.
• While an underpinning, and largely realised, feature of the world of The Wall is "civilization within, barbarism without", one of my bugbears about the IPCC scenarios that we use in climate change research is that, no matter how bad their futures get, things remain civilised. I think scenario designers might do well to read The Wall and reflect.