My Revolutions [Hardcover]

Like his first novel, "The Impressionist", Hari Kunzru's latest is about the nature of identity and re-invention of self. In "My Revolutions", former 60's radical Michael Frame is living a quiet suburban life as a bookseller with his wife Miranda, who runs a cosmetics company that boasts of its "natural botanicals" while factory-producing them. He's kept his past a secret from his wife and step daughter: that of a zealous anti-Vietnam War protester named Chris Carver who blew up buildings as part of a leftist group that included his occasional lover Anna Addison. Now (in 1998), while on a French holiday, Michael glimpses someone who may be Anna, who he thought had been killed years before in a terrorist act. Shortly thereafter another old acquaintance from his revolutionary days, Miles Bridgeman, tracks Michael down and begins blackmailing him, threatening to expose Michael's former identity. With one foot in a past that is about to pounce on him, Michael struggles to re-connect with Anna and stay one step ahead of Miles. Michael's youthful experiences, in which he is first drawn into the counterculture, are vividly rendered, and his present-day travails and staid family life illustrate the difficulty in retaining some sense of idealism while leading a peaceful modern existence. A relatively short book with no shortage of thought-provoking ideas, and better yet, characters that, with all their contradictions and hypocrisy, are real and engaging.

Also recommended: A Stranger Lies There - a superior desert-noir about a former 60's radical who's never forgiven himself for his part in a violent anti-Vietnam War action that left three dead. His past catches up with him one morning in the form of an unidentified corpse on his front lawn. "A STRANGER LIES THERE" won the Malice Domestic Award for best first mystery, and earned "two thumbs way up" from the other major online bookseller's Editorial Review. It explores some of the same themes as "My Revolutions" does, within the framework of an engrossing mystery.

I was quite enthralled with this book, mostly since it really appears that Hari Kunzru has done his homework. He really paints a vibrant picture of the era of a sixties revolutionary hell bent on change. You can picture every row house brick in the burroughs, and the cramped in meetings of the characters he picks up along the way.

The best success is the feelings he gives to the reader in wanting to know what really makes these activists in his story tick, they really are off the deep end in politicizing even the most single trivial decisions. Kunzru also manages to stay away from stupid plot devices and from the nicely wrapped up ending. You really get a sense of wanting to know what happens next, and never feel cheated in the end.

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

Recommended. L Fleisig