Customer Reviews

When the Kissing Had to Stop

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Trifle surprising that this book has not yet been reviewed. It was written in the depths of the Cold War. The author depicted a Britain set sometime in the future, plagued by social decay and promiscuity. Where the politicians were feckless and blithely unaware of the peril of Soviet communism.

The plot centres on the capitulation of Britain to the Soviets, who then proceed to occupy it and ship dissidents to labour camps in Siberia. The book ends with a timeline of events, like the crushing of labour strikes in the British heartland. And the deaths of many deported to Siberia. The term gulag had not yet entered English when the book was written, but it will immediately spring to mind to a current reader.

The book is a chilling hardline view. Luckily, it can now be safely read as a dark alternate history that never was. You can compare it to the American novel SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, which also came out around the same time. But FitzGibbon's is a far grimmer read.

The novel entertains a scenario wherein the Soviet Union takes over Britain through the work of a Quisling who becomes the prime minister.

This book was one of the very few novels written during the Cold War to take a decidedly anti-Communist stance and so the leftists in the West did its best in suppressing it through their tried and true tactic of relegating it to oblivion, as they have with so many other novels (Gouzenko's Fall of a Titan being another). It occasionally resurfaced, phoenix-like.

I have to admit, though, that I thought the title to be an atrocious choice.