Customer Reviews

Chalcot Crescent

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In a world much like our own, but darker, Weldon imagines the life her younger, stillborn sister Frances might have had in an Orwellian 2013 England where the economy has truly tanked. The National Unity Government (NUG), "composed not of politicians but of sociologists and therapists," distributes National Meatloaf ("suitable for vegetarians") and monitors the mostly unemployed populace with CiviCams.

Frances, the narrator, 80, hides from the bailiffs come to repossess the house and recalls her youth, when she stole two of her sister's boyfriends and married one, became a famous novelist (while sister Fay moved to Australia and became a cookbook writer), had two daughters, and got divorced and remarried and divorced again.

She made a pile of money but heady splurging and bad investments have ruined her and now the bank wants the house she has lived in for 40-plus years. Her neighbors are gone, their houses abandoned, and NUG has commandeered the back gardens for a communal vegetable plot. Her son-in-law, a former research scientist, is now climbing the ranks of the National Institute for Food Excellence (NIFE) and keeps her in the occasional pound of real coffee or jug of milk.

In between reminiscences, regrets and might-have-beens, Frances faces the real-time antics of her grandchildren and cohorts, who invade her house as a meeting place for (possibly) terrorist activities and treat her with the timeless disregard of youth.

Weldon's sharp wit spares neither past nor present, from the Sexual Revolution and leftist politics of the 60s and 70s to the excesses of the 2000s and their aftermath: the Shock, the Crunch, the Recovery, the Fall, the Crisis and the Bite.

Frances' voice is sardonic, but tempered with the wisdom of age. Her satirical view spares herself no more than her family and fellow citizens. Vivid urban details of crumbling infrastructure, patriarchal rule and paranoia are as funny as they are realistic and chilling. Weldon fans will find her at the top of her game.

Fay Weldon, the immensely popular British author of twenty-nine previous novels, creates an unusual variation of metafiction in this new novel. Here, an elderly author is sitting on the stairs behind the closed front door of her house in Chalcot Crescent, evading the bailiffs who want to talk with her about her debts. The beleaguered author is Frances Prideaux, whose life parallels that of Fay Weldon in almost every key issue. Frances, however, says she is the sister of Fay, an author she claims is now reduced to writing cookbooks. Frances herself has written dozens of successful novels, and now, needing more money, has decided to write "a fantasy about alternative universes."

Frances's alternative universe is in 2013, a time in which Britain is in dire straits financially and socially, and her writing becomes this novel, a broad satire of the issues she sees dominating British life in the immediate future. These issues alternate with Frances's commentary on her own life and that of her family. The Shock of 2008 has eventually evolved into the phony Recovery of 2012, and finally the Bite of 2013. It is a time of fuel allowances, ration books, roads and other infrastructure in decay, power cuts, water shortages, sixty percent unemployment, and banks which charge the depositor for putting the money into the bank! The National Unity Government (NUG) controls all, the National Institute for Food Excellence (NICE) feeds the people (mostly on National Meat Loaf, made from suspicious substances), and the National Institute of Homes for Everyone (NIHE) provides housing. Neighborhood Watch, aided by CiviCams, "protects the peace."

As Frances describes her life, past and present, the reader comes to know about her child out of wedlock, her many marriages, the marriages and liaisons of her two daughters, all their children, and their relationships with her and with each other. Several of the grandchildren and their friends have suddenly appeared at Frances's house in Chalcot Crescent, intent upon using her house as the central headquarters from which they will capture an important person in the government and conduct their own coup.

Weldon's social commentary is to the point, but it, and the satire associated with it, are heavy-handed, lacking the subtlety that allows readers (at least this one) to identify with it. Annoying and unnecessary aphorisms pop up everywhere for emphasis: "Money gives you confidence. You can laugh at authority," "Fate determines all things. What happens was meant to be." Frances introduces numerous characters from her life, but their importance to the thematic unity of the novel is unclear. There is much repetition, and the novel, overall, feels rough and fragmented, "scattered" and somewhat unfocused. It may be that Weldon's late novels benefit from a long familiarity with Weldon, both as a writer and as a person, but it lacked charm for me, and I will be interested to see how successful the book is with an American audience. Mary Whipple

It is 2013. And in England the collapse of the economy in 2008 is playing itself out because nothing has worked to bring it back. The NUG is in control--the National Unity Government--and those readers who know Orwell's "1984"--and who doesn't?--will experience what very well might actually happen. It is a world filled with paranoia, with surveillance cameras everywhere: "Dath by caual push is rumoured to be one of NUG's favoured methods of assassinaiton," she says at one point in the novel. "...paranoia has swept the country: we who used to be so trusting, so welcoming of immigrants, dismayed by a smacked child, hopeful of globalism, who felt loyal even of our mortgage company, are now thoroughly suspicious." As well they should be. And as well as most of us might be if we were to collectively acknowledge just how scary it is to live in a world where Wall Street rules supreme. Google continues to exist is "This page cannot currently be displayed" is any indication of just how scare information is. Oh, yes, and there is a NW. A Neighbourhood Watch. Fay Weldon draws well, in a timely way, from Orwell.
This tale is told brilliantly--at least most of it is--by an octogenarian published writer who lives with her grandson, Amos, on Chalcot Crescent. And when the novel opens, outside her door, men are attempting to get her to open up so they can perform some type of foreclosure since this house she has owned for nearly 50 years is now in jeopardy as have been millions of other homes.
At times our narrator berates her own writing, telling us we might do well to stop reading the book. But I don't think you will. Or telling us that what we are reading is "a bowdlerised version"--note that I am using the British spellings--and she will get around to editing it later. And she seems to know just about everything that is going on, recreating conversations she would not have heard except she is able, she claims, to piece things together based upon what people tell her in phone conversations and emails when she can get them. The electricity is often off. Water is very scare, mainly because it has become the only significant export England has. You do know it rains a lot there, right?
Everything has become nationalized including the meatloaf: National Meat Loaf which she claims everyone likes, the current staple food that has replaced bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. Why? Because Europe is no longer able to import food since "everyone has their own people to feed."
"The European Community is in disarray and, though not formally disbanded, might as well be: it can no longer enforce its rulings through financial penalties and has no other means of doing so."
I have highlighted the political/economic satire. But know this is a novel with a wonderful cast which include the narrator's daughters, their children, their several former husbands and lovers, her former husband and lovers. And we are constantly aware that she is about to lose her home, the one she has had to fight for in divorce court, the one she has paid for from selling her novels, back when she was a popular writer. Yes, there is lots of laugh at although darkly.
And I for one am becoming more and more convinced that by 1213 we might be living under the constant surveillance of Big Brother as our politicians cave in even more to Big Brother CEOs.