Customer Reviews

Friends in Low Places

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Complex characters are rarely what they seem, situations are never straightforward, but the resolutions are satisfying vindications of a world where passion triumphs over adherence to social dogma in the public school world of post-war Britain. I could not put these novels down and am searching for the subsequent installments as they have not been released in the US. Ravin eviscerates his characters' vain pretensions while making readers fall in love with their flaws. As the novels progress humanity bumps its head on the creaky half-timbered buildings of the British(Christian) Empire and lots of people get bruised. Wonderful, gossipy, erotic as well as thought-provoking page-turners. I can't really give enough praise. The only other recent fiction that I liked this much was Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy.

At the time of this book's appearance in the 60's I heard Simon Raven described as wicked or naughty or that kind of thing, and indeed even 10 years or so ago I read a notice in a publication that I think highly of that still talked of enjoying some louche and overripe ambience in his writing. Am I just unshockable (I very much doubt that), or has the literary bar for naughtiness and wickedness been raised a long way in the last 40-odd years? I am in little doubt which it is.

In my own opinion, Friends in Low Places is a very enjoyable and very readable novel. The author seems to me perfectly clear in his mind what sort of story he wants to write, and perfectly consistent in the way he goes about it. It is a fictionalised study of a certain English social class at a particular period of recent history. The class is Macmillan's Tory party, and the time is immediately following the Suez debacle, this latter chosen not so much for its political significance as because it fits the overall narrative very conveniently. What we are invited to behold is the English ruling elite behaving with casual and insouciant ruthlessness, still oblivious to any likely threat to their hold on power. They make a good story, and I absolve Raven totally of anything so tawdry and unsophisticated as attempting to `lift the lid' on the world that his actors inhabit. He depicts it all as a blasé insider would, and he never seems shocked for the very good and simple reason that nothing that happens is really all that shocking. Are you shaken to the core of your being when a Tory selection committee is controlled in practice by two or three grandees who choose the more unpleasant and less honest of the candidates? You would more likely be startled if they were represented as doing the opposite. Likewise the sexual aspects of the narrative are not so much tame as nearly non-existent, passing references to background issues rather than integral to the plot. Will you be horrified to read about a hard-up and exploitative gigolo? Hardly, and in fact even this theme is much more financial than erotic in its emphasis. As for the apparent dynamite contained in a letter revealing dark secrets in the conduct of senior cabinet ministers in relation to Suez, we are not given details but if we had been they would probably be small beer in comparison with the organised deception and chicanery we have got used to nowadays.

In general, expect another tale of the lifestyle of the wealthy, a kind of British equivalent of Dallas in a sense, although told with elegance, skill and not a little dry humour. Insofar as the story has dated, that is because the mise-en-scene has dated. By the time Friends in Low Places was even published the government was already Labour. The Tory party returned to power first under Heath and later under Thatcher, but in a very downmarket reincarnation. How much period charm other readers may find in this book I am simply in no position to say. What I will say is that, within its own terms of reference, this tale is engaging and inventive. I can't imagine this society returning in the form we find it here. It is probably no loss in reality, but it makes for good fiction.