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How one radical was born, then reborn
At first, the lead character of Hari Kunzru's novel, set in the 1960s, just wanted the girl.
My Revolutions
By Hari Kunzru Dutton. 280 pp. $25.95
Reviewed by Kelly Jane Torrance
How does fervent idealism morph into at-any-cost fundamentalism? What makes a radical cross the line to revolutionary? What goes on in the mind of a terrorist? In My Revolutions, his third novel, British author Hari Kunzru offers one answer to those questions, which have particularly troubled us over the last 61/2 years. His novel focuses on just one man, who, in his quest to make people's lives better, found himself threatening those lives, but its insight and implications reach much further. My Revolutions is no boring political parable, though. Kunzru is not just a thinker, but an impressively talented storyteller and stylist as well. My Revolutions opens with Michael Frame watching preparations for his 50th birthday party and considering whether to leave his common-law wife, stepdaughter, and comfortable home in Chichester behind and make a dash to the Continent. Because he's really Chris Carver, and his cover is about to be blown. The story of this quiet, small-town bookseller's radical youth is told in a series of flashbacks parallel to the story of his escape. Chris was introduced to politics by a gorgeous woman and he's introduced to radical politics by a gorgeous woman, too. He is a bored teenager in the London suburbs when an older girl named Maggie hands him a pamphlet and he falls in love with her and "all the thrilling science-fiction pornography of nuclear war." He soon moves farther into the city, as a student at the London School of Economics, and brings his politics with him. He joins up with a left-wing group that focuses its protests on the American Embassy, in opposition to the Vietnam War. At one of these protests, he's arrested and sent to jail. This section has some of Kunzru's most pungent writing - the sort that critics say places him as a satirist in the vein of Evelyn Waugh and Martin Amis. Chris is asked a few questions when he starts his sentence. Religion? "None." "C of E, then" - Church of England - the clerk writes. Chris objects, "I don't believe in God." "That comes under C of E," the clerk responds. Chris is then sent to the showers, where the guards give him "an unhurried beating." Kunzru's prose has an uncomplicated beauty. He talks of the sky's "purples and ink blues, bruise colors" that make it a "smashed-up sky." His metaphors are often telling. The bookstore where Michael works has an "odor of cat piss and intellectual decay." The man from his past who discovers him wears a suit with "a brash Rupert Bear check.") Chris' protest was a peaceful one, and he actually hasn't broken any law. So his punishment - and his fellow, luckier students' shunning of him afterward - only serves to radicalize him. He drops out of school and aligns himself with a more serious crowd. It's the late 1960s, and Kunzru captures the time perfectly - the easy sex with pretty girls, the casual drug use, the feeling of possibility, the way the very air is filled with "change, the sense that everything was in play." Chris is drawn to this sect by the presence of one Anna Addison, who, with her un-monogamous boyfriend, Sean Ward (it's the free-love '60s, after all), pushes the group further and further to the extreme. Anna isn't as well-drawn a character as Chris, who narrates his own story. She always remains something of a mystery to him, which is of course part of her appeal. But Kunzru's portrait of her is intriguing. She is willing to sacrifice humanity, even her own, for a cause she passionately believes will find its importance far beyond her generation. Chris doesn't much question the group when they start their bombings; in fact, he's an enthusiastic participant. But when those bombings finally lead to injuries and his compatriots don't even think the harm is worth discussing, Chris starts to become disillusioned. The group, though, with Anna as its charismatic leader, is more fascist than the American "fascists" they're protesting. Chris may have to decide whose life is more important, his or that of the people who are the "collateral damage" of his activities. We don't know until near the end of the novel why Chris left Britain for Thailand and returned with a new name and identity. What we do know is that he may have left politics behind, but he's still disdainful of others who never cared about them. "You're lucky that politics feels optional, something it's safe to ignore," he says of his teenage stepdaughter. "Most people in the world have it forced on them." The victims of the Angry Brigade, one of the British revolutionary groups that inspired Kunzru, certainly did. So did the victims of Sept. 11. Hari Kunzru reminds us of this not with a lecture, but with a crackling good story of one regular guy who first became political, then got radicalized, and finally got into something way over his head.
Kelly Jane Torrance is an arts and entertainment writer at the Washington Times and fiction editor of Doublethink. She blogs at www.kellyjanetorrance.com.
By Hari Kunzru Dutton. 280 pp. $25.95
Reviewed by Kelly Jane Torrance
How does fervent idealism morph into at-any-cost fundamentalism? What makes a radical cross the line to revolutionary? What goes on in the mind of a terrorist? In My Revolutions, his third novel, British author Hari Kunzru offers one answer to those questions, which have particularly troubled us over the last 61/2 years. His novel focuses on just one man, who, in his quest to make people's lives better, found himself threatening those lives, but its insight and implications reach much further. My Revolutions is no boring political parable, though. Kunzru is not just a thinker, but an impressively talented storyteller and stylist as well. My Revolutions opens with Michael Frame watching preparations for his 50th birthday party and considering whether to leave his common-law wife, stepdaughter, and comfortable home in Chichester behind and make a dash to the Continent. Because he's really Chris Carver, and his cover is about to be blown. The story of this quiet, small-town bookseller's radical youth is told in a series of flashbacks parallel to the story of his escape. Chris was introduced to politics by a gorgeous woman and he's introduced to radical politics by a gorgeous woman, too. He is a bored teenager in the London suburbs when an older girl named Maggie hands him a pamphlet and he falls in love with her and "all the thrilling science-fiction pornography of nuclear war." He soon moves farther into the city, as a student at the London School of Economics, and brings his politics with him. He joins up with a left-wing group that focuses its protests on the American Embassy, in opposition to the Vietnam War. At one of these protests, he's arrested and sent to jail. This section has some of Kunzru's most pungent writing - the sort that critics say places him as a satirist in the vein of Evelyn Waugh and Martin Amis. Chris is asked a few questions when he starts his sentence. Religion? "None." "C of E, then" - Church of England - the clerk writes. Chris objects, "I don't believe in God." "That comes under C of E," the clerk responds. Chris is then sent to the showers, where the guards give him "an unhurried beating." Kunzru's prose has an uncomplicated beauty. He talks of the sky's "purples and ink blues, bruise colors" that make it a "smashed-up sky." His metaphors are often telling. The bookstore where Michael works has an "odor of cat piss and intellectual decay." The man from his past who discovers him wears a suit with "a brash Rupert Bear check.") Chris' protest was a peaceful one, and he actually hasn't broken any law. So his punishment - and his fellow, luckier students' shunning of him afterward - only serves to radicalize him. He drops out of school and aligns himself with a more serious crowd. It's the late 1960s, and Kunzru captures the time perfectly - the easy sex with pretty girls, the casual drug use, the feeling of possibility, the way the very air is filled with "change, the sense that everything was in play." Chris is drawn to this sect by the presence of one Anna Addison, who, with her un-monogamous boyfriend, Sean Ward (it's the free-love '60s, after all), pushes the group further and further to the extreme. Anna isn't as well-drawn a character as Chris, who narrates his own story. She always remains something of a mystery to him, which is of course part of her appeal. But Kunzru's portrait of her is intriguing. She is willing to sacrifice humanity, even her own, for a cause she passionately believes will find its importance far beyond her generation. Chris doesn't much question the group when they start their bombings; in fact, he's an enthusiastic participant. But when those bombings finally lead to injuries and his compatriots don't even think the harm is worth discussing, Chris starts to become disillusioned. The group, though, with Anna as its charismatic leader, is more fascist than the American "fascists" they're protesting. Chris may have to decide whose life is more important, his or that of the people who are the "collateral damage" of his activities. We don't know until near the end of the novel why Chris left Britain for Thailand and returned with a new name and identity. What we do know is that he may have left politics behind, but he's still disdainful of others who never cared about them. "You're lucky that politics feels optional, something it's safe to ignore," he says of his teenage stepdaughter. "Most people in the world have it forced on them." The victims of the Angry Brigade, one of the British revolutionary groups that inspired Kunzru, certainly did. So did the victims of Sept. 11. Hari Kunzru reminds us of this not with a lecture, but with a crackling good story of one regular guy who first became political, then got radicalized, and finally got into something way over his head.
Kelly Jane Torrance is an arts and entertainment writer at the Washington Times and fiction editor of Doublethink. She blogs at www.kellyjanetorrance.com.
