Check out these books...
1) "The Windsor Faction" by D.J. Taylor
An amusing historical novel and piece of alternative history from Taylor (Derby Day, 2012, etc.).
The book is set in England in the years leading up to World War II: Here, Wallis Simpson, the American woman Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry, dies in December 1936. Edward remains king and participates in a conspiracy of British Fascists. Several real people have prominent roles in the novel, and their fates are not unlike what happened in real life. The plot is a plot, a conspiracy. Members of Parliament and lowly factotums in faux antiques shops all play a role, passing messages, delivering mysterious packages. Our protagonist is the plucky Cynthia Kirkpatrick, a young, fey colonial returned from Ceylon. She moves in the social circles of those who make history, but she’s on the periphery. Back in London, Cynthia works for a new literary magazine called Duration. Here, she meets the mysterious Anthea Carey, the knowing and active opposite of Cynthia’s naïve observer. Cynthia is drawn into Anthea’s orbit and, finally, in a thriller-ish denouement, into action. A couple of dozen characters are sketched in, along with several daft pro-German organizations. Taylor’s writing overflows with a fine excess. A group of partygoers is “this tatterdemalion horde.” Another looked, “as if the bottle of wine is a prelude to some Barmecidal feast that will suddenly drop from the rafters onto a dozen gleaming golden plates.”
A yummy, multi-course meal.
2) "Dominion" by C.J. Sansom
What did you do in the war, Pater—eh, Vater?
Let’s suppose, as Sansom does in this long, engaging bit of speculative fiction, that the Nazis had won the war. Or, perhaps more specifically, that they had stared the British down, won concessions from Lloyd George (who had “spent the thirties idolizing Hitler, calling him Germany’s George Washington”) and effectively made the United Kingdom a satellite of the Third Reich. Winston Churchill, pressed to join the Quisling government, instead spearheads a vee-for-victory resistance movement, while German racial purity laws gradually come into effect on the streets of London, with most residents only too glad to be rid of the Jews; meanwhile, critics of the regime, such as W.H. Auden and E.M. Forster, have been silenced. To judge by his name and appearance, David Fitzgerald should have no trouble in the new Britain, but his bloodline tells a different tale: “He knew that under the law he too should have worn a yellow badge, and should not be working in government service, an employment forbidden to Jews”—even half-Jews, even Irish Jews. His wife, for her part, is content at first to keep her head down and her mouth shut until the Final Solution comes to the sceptered isle. If there is hope, it will come from America, where, as one dour Brit remarks, “they love their superweapons, the Americans. Almost as bad as the Germans.” Sansom’s scenario is all too real, and it has sparked a modest controversy among it-couldn’t-happen-here readers across the water. More important than the scenario is his careful unfolding of the vast character study that fascism affords, his portraits of those who resist and those who collaborate and why. That scenario, after all, is not new; Philip K. Dick, Len Deighton and Philip Roth have explored it, too. What matters is what is done with it, and Sansom has done admirably.
A rich and densely plotted story that will make Winston Churchill buffs admire the man even more.
3) "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth
A politically charged alternate history in which Aryan supremacist hero Charles Lindbergh unseats FDR in 1940—with catastrophic consequences for America’s Jews.
Roth’s latest (and one of his most audacious) is narrated by a fictional character named Philip Roth, who describes the impact of Lindbergh’s presidency (linked ominously to “Lindy’s” cordial relationship with fellow statesman Adolf Hitler) on Newark insurance salesman Herman Roth, his stoical wife Bess, and their sons Philip and Sanford (“Sandy”). Novelist Roth skillfully constructs a thickly detailed panorama of urban Jewish life, featuring such vividly developed characters as Philip’s truculent cousin Alvin (wounded in a “Jewish” European war, and permanently damaged), his suggestible maternal aunt Evelyn (who adores Lindbergh), and Evelyn’s influential fiancé, silver-tongued conservative apologist Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf. The latter two pay dearly for their naively placed allegiances. But so do the passionately skeptical Roths: first, when Sandy’s summer on a Kentucky farm imbues him with “American” (in fact anti-Semitic) values; and later, following the 1942 Homestead Act, purportedly conceived to relocate eastern seaboard Jews throughout Middle America, actually an ominous harbinger of how Lindbergh plans to solve “the Jewish problem.” The tight focus on the Roths itself shifts when Lindbergh-hating columnist Walter Winchell announces his presidential candidacy, violence escalates alarmingly, martial law is imposed, war with Canada (whence many Jewish families flee) is anticipated, and a savagely ironic turn of events returns FDR to the national spotlight—but doesn’t assuage Herman Roth’s all-too-justifiable fears. The story gathers breakneck velocity and intensity, ending perhaps too abruptly (and, perhaps, pointing the way to a sequel). But hilarious and terrifying by turns, it’s a sumptuous interweaving of narrative, characterization, speculation, and argument that joins The Ghost Writer(1979) and Operation Shylock (1993) at the summit of Roth’s achievement.
An almost unbelievably rich book, and another likely major prizewinner.
4) "The Children's War" by J.N. Stroyar
Toweringly intelligent, with icy touches showing how all sides dehumanize to achieve their aims. Stylish, no, but a fierce picture of massive dystopian evil.
5) "Resurrection Day" by Brendan DuBois
The speculative setting for DuBois’s latest (after Shattered Shell, p. 106, etc.) is the world after the Cuban missile crisis got resolved the hard way. Turning from touristy Tyler Beach, New Hampshire, and his Lewis Cole series, the author focuses on a landscape bleaker in every respect. It’s l972, ten years after the Russians, with nuclear warheads based in Cuba, took out New York, Washington, D.C., and a lengthy list of other significant American cities. In return, the US took out the Soviet Union—all of it. Untold millions have been killed, including President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, and most of the Cabinet. The once-great Western power has been reduced to second-class status. In fact, had it not been for British aid during this painful decade, the nation would surely have starved. Carl Landry, a former serviceman who’s now a reporter for the Boston Globe, understands how much is owed the English cousins, but he finds himself in a complex situation. Following up on what at first seems like a commonplace burglary-murder, he soon senses a cover-up. As he tracks the story for his paper, Carl learns that there may be an Anglophile conspiracy afoot, a plot that if successful would convert, or rather reconvert, the States into a British colony. Powerful interests wanted the dead man silenced, and before long, it becomes obvious that these same interests plan a similar fate for Carl. In the meantime, laudable efforts are going forward to rebuild what the bombing destroyed, and as climactic Resurrection Day approaches, the battle lines are drawn in the approved suspense fiction manner: black-hearted forces of evil on one side, simon- pure forces of good on the other. DuBois’s version of life after limited nuclear war has some clever constructs, but turgid pacing and threadbare characterization reduce a promising what-if to so-so.
6) "Making History" by Stephen Fry
7) "For Want of A Nail" by Robert Sobel
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.