‘The revolutionary generation has failed, and who can account for that?’ – We Had It So Good by Linda Grant

I jumped at the chance of reviewing Linda Grant’s latest book, mistakenly assuming that I’d already read her back catalogue.  I think I was getting her confused with Ali Smith or Monica Ali, and I’ve got no explanation or excuse for that; as it turns out, I hadn’t read any of Grant’s previous titles, but having now raced through We Had It So Good, I’m determined to right that particular wrong.

Grant’s been shortlisted for the Man Booker before (The Clothes on Their Backs, 2008) and I wouldn’t be surprised if the bookies give her good odds this time round, too.  Not only is We Had It So Good an elegantly written, engaging and accessible example of literary fiction, but it should also hit a pretty resonant political nerve with many of its audience members.  It follows the life of Stephen Newman, a Californian kid, the son of a Cuban mother and a Polish father, who dodges the draft by heading to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in the middle of the Vietnam war.  There he meets Andrea, his future wife; her peculiar and disturbed friend, Grace; and Stephen’s lifelong friend, the ad-man and ever-fortunate opportunist Ivan.  They synthesise LSD in an Oxford lab, live in an anarchist squat, travel the world, marry and have children – children whom they fully expect will reap the benefits of their parents’ broadened horizons and boundless ambition. Stephen and his contemporaries are the British baby-boomers: they expect to thrive, they’re able to buy cheap property, get a free education, stage political protests. They want to right their parents’ wrongs (their repressed, repressive and persecuted parents) and they want to change the world.  But the world, of course, changes without them – while they settle into their rambling Islington mansion, and Andrea trains as a psychotherapist and Stephen lands a job as a BBC producer, their children are born into more precarious, uncertain times, and the September 11^th and July 7^th attacks mark their coming of age. Stephen becomes shrill, paranoid and fearful: his equanimity and optimism in shreds, he asks, plaintively, where it all went wrong.  They had it so good, he tells himself, baffled; they had it all figured out, and yet here they are: old, ill, and ruined.  And this is the central question that the novel poses: the revolutionary generation has failed, and who can account for that?

I’m not going to give away any spoilers, but Grant’s packed enough tangles and intrigues into the text to make it a real page-turner as well as a thoughtful and considered look at the disappointments of a generation.  As well as Stephen’s story, we’ve got both Andrea’s and Grace’s, and then those of the children – Marianne and Max – as they grow up.  There’s even a late detour into the early twentieth century to close the circle with Stephen’s father’s tale.  It’s a traditional novel in that sense – a family saga – and the characters and cultural observations are fascinating.  Stephen’s bemused American insights into his new Oxford world are sharp and funny:

‘He had no idea that the qualification for being British was the naming of vegetation, of trees, flowers and  types of landscape. What was the difference between a rill and a brook?  Did anybody know?  And what did it matter?’

Andrea is a therapist who wants her family and friends to delve into their pasts to explain their presents, much like the novel lays out its character’s back-stories to clarify their attitudes to the world and to one another.  While she mourns her photographer daughter’s emotional reticence, she says of her son, a professional magician:

‘[H]e was the member of the family best equipped to deal with the terrifying changes that worried all of them.  He was a man of the moment, she thought.  He rode the wave.  He had neither hopes nor ambitions, did not wish to make the world a better place.’

Grace, perhaps the most revolutionary-minded member of their university set, refuses to settle and carries on questioning the status quo and the accepted explanations of contemporary atrocities (she prefers the term ‘rebel’ to ‘terrorist’, she queries the ubiquitous blaming of Al Qaeda) – but she’s unhappy and alone, always nursing a terrible secret from her adolescence.  Are revolution and protest, dissent and ambition, compatible with personal comfort and happiness?  Grant doesn’t give us an answer, but she does show us how the different possibilities can play out in all their ambiguities and complexities.

Structurally, it’s a straightforward novel – more or less chronological with clearly defined alternating narrators.  Grace’s sections are first-person testimonials, while the rest are loosely arranged as Stephen’s and Andrea’s memories, prompted by their need (mostly Stephen’s) to defend and account for their lives as their children grow up.  The different perspectives are nicely balanced, particularly as Marianne’s and Max’s voices chime in later to illuminate their own lives and those of their parents.  The multiple voices – often within a single chapter – never seem discordant or confusing; rather, I looked forward to each one, to Grant’s evocation of different childhoods and personalities and desires, to the poetry of her prose.

Any Cop?  Certainly.  I came to Linda Grant cold, and if her other books are half as good as this one, I’ll devour the lot.  We Had It So Good is insightful without giving into easy nostalgia, and funny without being reductive.  It’s sweeping without compromising on momentary details.  It’ll please lovers of literary fiction and those who just want to hear the travails of an Euro-American dynasty.  Do you need more convincing?  This is my first Booker-nominee bet of the year.  (Disclaimer: all bets are hypothetical. Do you people think I’m made of money?)

Valerie O’Riordan