One of Us

There are some similarities between this and Melissa Benn's debut novel Public Lives (see my review): each begins in the 1970s, though the former ended when still in the Thatcher era, while this one carries on into the Blair years; each describes a bourgeois left-wing political family; in each the central character - here Anna Adams - feels something of an outsider, though this time not in her family so much as with regard to the intensity of their political commitment; in each book there is a good description of the complex relationship between the central character and her siblings. The Adams family are very friendly with the Givings family; and one of Anna's brothers, Matt, becomes the enthusiastic agent of Andy Givings, its head. We watch how Andy's character changes as he becomes a Member of Parliament in 1987, soon on the Labour shadow team until the author has Blair make him a foreign secretary in 2001 (surely too riskily, when we know who the real foreign secretary was at the time?): he is ambitious, becomes more mechanical in his personal relationships, and is very New Labour, hawkish about the Iraq war, and straining all sorts of earlier relationships. Anna's other brother, Jack, is the odd one out in the family: scruffy like a tramp, uncommunicative (except to Anna, the only person to whom he can relate), getting a job in a housing charity after a long period of unemployment, and then becoming an activist, first in a case resembling that against the McDonald's food chain which began in 1978, and then in left-wing street demonstrations. Throughout the author strikes a note of feminist protest, about how the men - at least these particular men - take their wives for granted and, indeed, how the wives accept their subservient role: there is a telling moment during a family dinner party when the men argue quite vehemently about whether New Labour is betraying single mothers, while the wives nervously say nothing at all, busying themselves with their children. There are personal betrayals as well as political ones. From time to time we briefly lose sight of the political dimensions as we are made to focus (occasionally in a somewhat novelettish way) on Anna's private life; but never for long. This novel, like its predecessor, is cleverly structured; and the political impinges on the private because Anna cares for those whose involvement is more political than hers: for her father, for her brothers, for Andy and for Andy's conscience-driven son Dan. Melissa Benn comes from a political family. While this is not a roman à clef, it seems to me to portray a deep disillusionment with what politics does to the individuals who engage in it, and to their families. It is a sad book, with a savage and sad ending.