Some moral questions to end the year and see us into the next! Is it okay for some to go hungry while others feast? Is it okay that the accident of where we are born, and to whom, determines our life chances? Does it matter that, with modernity and the march of capitalism, the gap between the haves and have nots is widening? Neither this tragicomedy set in Edinburgh nor this scattershot novel set in India have the answers, but they can entertain us while making us reflect on the issues.
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Billionaires’ Banquet by Ron Butlin
With a name like Hume, Ron Butlin’s Edinburgh-based protagonist just has to be a philosopher. In the summer of 1985, when the story begins, he’s completed his PhD and is celebrating the publication of his paper “The Appearance of Reality and the Reality of Appearance” in the prestigious journal, Thought. He hopes it will not only kickstart his brilliant career but cement his relationship with mathematics wiz Cat. But she walks out of his life a few days later, driving him into the arms of music-student DD. Neither she, nor Thatcher’s Britain, has much use for philosophising, so Hume reinvents himself as an entrepreneur, delivering, thanks to a handbook on domestic servitude picked up at the local Oxfam shop, an exclusive butlering service to the wealthy.
Twenty years on, he’s married DD and Executive Service has given them the luxurious lifestyle they’d previously viewed only from the outside. But spiralling wealth for some means increasing destitution for others and Hume’s conscience is pricking. He’s going to rebrand his company, and separate it from the murky sideline that has supplemented its income, with a media-friendly charity dinner, at which only a fraction of those who’ve bought a £1000 ticket will be served the fine food to which they are accustomed, while the majority receive water and plain boiled rice. But with anti-capitalist protesters descending on the venue from the G8 summit a few miles down the road and Cat, on a visit from her home in Australia, as surprised as anyone to find herself among them, things might not go quite to plan.
Unaccustomed to the author’s meandering style, I wasn’t sure where this novel was going initially, if anywhere. But the lightness of touch and the themes of inequality and social justice saw me through the bumpy beginning until the shape of the story made itself known. Described by publishers, Salt, who provided my review copy, as “an immorality tale for the 21st-century”, it’s both a jolly romp and a sad indictment of the state of Britain today.
Twenty years on, he’s married DD and Executive Service has given them the luxurious lifestyle they’d previously viewed only from the outside. But spiralling wealth for some means increasing destitution for others and Hume’s conscience is pricking. He’s going to rebrand his company, and separate it from the murky sideline that has supplemented its income, with a media-friendly charity dinner, at which only a fraction of those who’ve bought a £1000 ticket will be served the fine food to which they are accustomed, while the majority receive water and plain boiled rice. But with anti-capitalist protesters descending on the venue from the G8 summit a few miles down the road and Cat, on a visit from her home in Australia, as surprised as anyone to find herself among them, things might not go quite to plan.
Unaccustomed to the author’s meandering style, I wasn’t sure where this novel was going initially, if anywhere. But the lightness of touch and the themes of inequality and social justice saw me through the bumpy beginning until the shape of the story made itself known. Described by publishers, Salt, who provided my review copy, as “an immorality tale for the 21st-century”, it’s both a jolly romp and a sad indictment of the state of Britain today.
The Ministry Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
What kind of second novel would a prominent Indian political activist come out with twenty years after her Booker-winning debut? A blend of mesmerising storytelling, perhaps, with a cry of rage about increasing inequalities in that vast and varied nation, with a particular focus on the subjugation of Kashmir? This sprawling state-of-the-nation novel doesn’t shirk the violence, but is nevertheless threaded with optimism that we can, despite our differences, rub along together. Especially if we face up to our internal wars rather than projecting conflict outside.
The main character – or the character to whom we’re first introduced – builds a community of oddballs in a Delhi graveyard. Unlike many other hijras, Anjum was born intersex and, although brought up as a boy and choosing to live as a woman, she sees herself as containing elements of both genders. Although not a powerful position, this gives her a degree of moral authority: she is “Indo-Pak” where India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads since independence. Among her associates are a dark-skinned South Indian woman who kidnaps an abandoned baby; an architect who becomes a resistance fighter in his native Kashmir; a Hindu who takes the name Saddam Hussein after his father is murdered because of his caste.
I found the opening section, under 100 pages of traditional storytelling, the most engaging. Although I found the Kashmir-set middle interesting, there were some longeurs when the author strays from character to push a political point. The later chapters did not seem as well written and/or edited as the rest. But these criticisms should be taken in the context of an extremely proficient writer with the moral courage to wash modern India’s dirty linen in public, showing the cruelties of Hindu nationalism, slum clearance, middle-class indifference to poverty, political corruption and the caste system. Thanks to Hamish Hamilton for my review copy. For another novel about the hijra community, see The Parcel.
The main character – or the character to whom we’re first introduced – builds a community of oddballs in a Delhi graveyard. Unlike many other hijras, Anjum was born intersex and, although brought up as a boy and choosing to live as a woman, she sees herself as containing elements of both genders. Although not a powerful position, this gives her a degree of moral authority: she is “Indo-Pak” where India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads since independence. Among her associates are a dark-skinned South Indian woman who kidnaps an abandoned baby; an architect who becomes a resistance fighter in his native Kashmir; a Hindu who takes the name Saddam Hussein after his father is murdered because of his caste.
I found the opening section, under 100 pages of traditional storytelling, the most engaging. Although I found the Kashmir-set middle interesting, there were some longeurs when the author strays from character to push a political point. The later chapters did not seem as well written and/or edited as the rest. But these criticisms should be taken in the context of an extremely proficient writer with the moral courage to wash modern India’s dirty linen in public, showing the cruelties of Hindu nationalism, slum clearance, middle-class indifference to poverty, political corruption and the caste system. Thanks to Hamish Hamilton for my review copy. For another novel about the hijra community, see The Parcel.
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