Customer Reviews

My Revolutions: A Novel

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Within the international context of the Vietnam War, the British intervention in Northern Ireland and May 68 in France, a group of angry young leftist revolutionaries rebels against the Political, Social and Moral Establishments for a better world.
They are impatient and frustrated that nearly nothing in the world changes and believe that through small actions (bombings, demonstrations, squatting) revolution is possible. `You can't hate the world's imperfections so absolutely without getting drawn towards death.'
They have a vision that `after the revolution there will be enough for all.'
But they make the cardinal sin of forgetting that in the real world the working class is organized (unions).

As always with leftists movements the members are all the time split by sectarian ideological rifts. On the (a)moral front, their life in a commune turns into a combat of roosters. As the Italian communist theorist Antonio Gramsci also believed, `a revolutionary transformation of society would require a transformation of social life', of man himself.

The main character in this book finally understands that his movement is doomed, that he (it) is powerless. But, his revolutionary past continues to haunt him. He becomes a pawn in an attempt to demolish the political career of a potential British PM.

Mixing brilliantly past and present, Hari Kunzru's novel, written like a thriller, gives a profound and thorough assessment of political action outside the real organized world.
Not to be missed.

This is a beautifully imagined story of the later years of a sixties radical -- the price he paid for his activism and his youthful passions. It's so well done, it's hard to imagine that Kunru wasn't there!

We're going to blast our way through here
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know its right." Thunderclap Newman

For many the revolution of the 60s (such as it was) was played out in song. Whether the Beatles, the Who, or Thunderclap Newman, there was a lot of talk, a lot of song, and plenty of demos and marches. But for the most part talk about revolution was just talk. There were some notable exceptions. Paris, Mexico and the Prague Spring in 1968 were a few. In the U.S. some elements of the anti-war movement, most notably the Weather Underground morphed into violence. The U.K. had the "Angry Brigade" and it is that group that provides the historical background for Hari Kunzru's new work, "My Revolutions".

"My Revolutions" takes us back to a time when something was in the air, but makes the reader question what that something actually was. Kunzru takes us down this path with one Mike Frame, a man approaching 50, leading a quiet, comfortable suburban life with his partner of 16-years, Miranda. We soon discover that Mike Frame is not at all what he seems to be. Rather, his real name is Chris Carver, a radical in the 60s who went underground after a series of robberies and bombings at the height of the anti-war movement in the UK. After a vacation on the continent Frame's life begins to unravel. He spots a woman there who appears to be one of his old comrades in arms. He is then approached by a second old comrade, one who seeks to blackmail Frame/Carver into revealing that yet another comrade, now a highly placed government official, was once part of the violent fringe of the anti-war movement in the UK. The novel alternates between the unraveling of Frame's life and the back story of Carver's. Kunzru does an excellent job in keeping the narrative going while jumping between Carver's story and that of his alter ego, Frame. Each story is laid out in such a way that the book's climax arrives just when the old and new identities are fully revealed to the reader.

Kunzru, who is too young to have lived through this time, gets the details perfectly. His description of the social and political life at University during that time was spot on. (Carver was at the London School of Economics at around the same time I was in Manchester.) The endlessly morphing student political groups, each a variant of the other, each claiming to the true interpreter of the genius of Marx and Lenin (International Marxist Group, International Socialists, the old-line CP, etc.) and each peopled by earnest students eager to change the world. The dead seriousness was matched by the same sort of endless conversations, the self-critical examinations and random anger set out perfectly by Kunzru. So to were Carver's recollections of random couplings as a political act, as a way of distancing oneself from the mores of the bourgeoisie. The book is filled with little snippets that really capture the time and Kunzru had me nodding nostalgically (if ruefully) time and time again.

At the same time, though, this spot-on accuracy did have one unintended side effect. Kunzru not only got the atmospherics right, he got the personalities right. As much as the characters made me wax nostalgic for the days of free love it also reminded of just how utterly self-important and devoid of humor this all was. The International Marxist Group and all its various and sundry splinters would never be confused with International Groucho Marxists. Consequently, Frame/Carver and his contemporaries are not exactly the sort of people a reader is likely to feel any great deal of empathy for. While Kunzru treats his characters' underlying idealism with no little bit of respect the sheer utter futility of their efforts marks them come across as little more than amateur, middle-class nihilists earnestly trying to make the world a better place by convincing themselves that destruction is a prerequisite to building a just society. That is not to criticize the book or the story in any way, I very much enjoyed the characters for the flawed, once-well-intended beings they were in their callow youth. But a reader who needs to feel some sort of emotional investment in a fictional character may be disappointed. I don't think that is an essential prerequisite for a successful novel but different readers may not feel that way.

"My Revolutions" is a worthy successor to Kunzru's earlier book, Transmission. It also made a nice companion book to His Illegal Self

Mike Frame's story begins innocently enough: his wife, Miranda, has organized a 50th birthday party, their troubled relationship shaky due to lapsed communication and Mike's dreadful secret. A secret he realizes is about to be exposed when a familiar face from the past arrives on his doorstep. Mike Frame has erected a documented identity, but Mike is really Chris Carver, a 1960s London revolutionary with a violent past. Now his carefully structured new life is threatened, Chris about to be exposed as Miles Bridgeman inserts himself into the present, making demands that Chris cannot ignore. Integrating his early years with Chris's frantic present, the author describes the long, painful journey of a young man seduced by ideals and socialist rhetoric, London youth outraged by the Vietnam War and the ongoing violence in Ireland, a culture in search of a cause, heady with their own importance and righteous anger against the establishment.

Leaving family behind, Chris finds community with his friends, a loose group of anarchists who spend long hours discussing a world they have not made, formulating a response to an intransigent and powerful government. Fueled by social issues, the group is determined to make a difference, to take action, sacrificing personal goals for the good of all. There is a natural progression from idealism to action, "the experience of transgression" pushing the revolutionaries to more dangerous, more thrilling adventures, fetishizing nonviolence, the liberal use of drugs, the growing paranoia of a group that eventually resorts to repeated violence to capture the public's attention. Chris is inseparable from the movement, even though he is unnerved by the brutal tactics and disregard for consequences, half in love with the fiery Anna, who casts aside every social convention in her fervor, a close-knit group of friends who march into demonstrations, arms linked.

This is a harrowing exploration of youthful idealism run aground by a self-defining counter-culture, the clear-eyed goals of the early days replaced by more nefarious plans, connections to radical groups in other countries. By the time he walks away, Chris has suffered a number of disturbing epiphanies, not the least of which is viewing himself as "a compulsive believer, always mistaking my ideas for the world". Bombs explode, people die, the radicalism of the 60s consumed by time and attrition. Chris has not accomplished the hoped-for escape from the furtive indiscretions and years of participation in anti-government activities. Ultimately, he has changed nothing, only piled up horror in his wake. Hoping to rescue some remnants of his life with Miranda from the threat Miles delivers with a smile, Chris comes face to face with the consequences of his actions. Kunzru is unsparing, the glory days long gone, the romance of revolution a smoldering heap of ashes as Chris scrambles for purchase and the devil demands his due. Luan Gaines/ 2009.

Kunru is a good writer (read The Impressionist), but every character in this book is a caricature, and I found it hard to care about any of them. Part of the problem here is historical: the bulk of the book focuses on the protagonist's time in the political counterculture of the 1960s. Seen from today's perspective (in my case, a perspective that believes that the US should not have been in Vietnam the focus of the political groups portrayed), that counterculture comes across as hopelessly naive, utterly humorless, and thoroughly self-indulgent. Perhaps that's Kunzru's point -- the best episode in this book occurs when the protagonist, Mike Frame, asks his political muse/love interest what it will be like when the revolution occurs. Of course neither she nor anyone has any idea what the answer is, and towards the end of the book she acknowledges that she's traveled too far, and become too broken by her "selfless" work,that she couldn't be a part of it anyway. I'll grant that these exchanges were acerbic and moving, but they don't make up for how 1-dimensional the rest of the characters are, and how stereotypical the protagonist's journey depicted here is. The counterculture devolves from pacifistic idealism to hard-knuckled, cynical violence; its group relations become stalinistic; the hero quits the scene, gets hooked on drugs, cleans up among Buddhist monks, comes home, and embarks on a dull middle-class life. Frame's current relationship is dull and meaningless by his own description -- it's impossible to know why or how he ever cared for his wife, who knows him only in his post-counterculture life; but he does appear to care about his step-daughter. Unfortunately, I found it hard to care at all about any of them. Maybe if you were there, these characters bring back memories and you can flesh out the sterotypes with real people. For those of us who weren't around back in the day, My Revolutions is a great disappointment.