We Had It So Good [Paperback]

I loved The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant and eagerly anticipated her latest novel, a tale of the "baby boomer" generation who indeed "had it so good" and perhaps did not appreciate their good fortune.

The novel is first and foremost character driven, covering 40 years in the lives of first generation American, Stephen Newman, his English wife, Andrea, their family and friends. Stephen, son of a Polish-Jewish immigrant father and a Cuban mother, manages to dodge the draft thanks to a Rhodes Scholarship during which he meets and marries Andrea, a pleasant English girl with bad teeth. It is initially a marriage of convenience as he avoids the horrors of war but they settle into each other despite Stephen's occasional pangs for American life. Somehow, despite little effort on his part, they land on their feet, having fully enjoyed the benefits of free university education, easy access to the property ladder, free health care, job opportunities - in part due to the sacrifices of their parents' generation.

So, is Stephen counting his blessings? Far from it, he is a most unlikeable character, taking everything for granted, never satisfied with his life, completely out of touch with his own children yet berating (in private) his own parents for their lack of affection. His friend Ivan, with whom he experimented in LSD manufacture whilst at Oxford, seemed to personify anarchy as a student but ends up as an advertising executive. The only character who stands true to her rebellious student stance is Grace who certainly doesn't find her honesty rewarded.

In this very thoughtful novel, Linda Grant lets her characters speak for themselves, hanging themselves as they do so. None of them have great emotional depth as they are from a self-obsessed generation, too busy contemplating their own navels to have developed any empathy along the way. Admittedly they might veer dangerously into stereotype territory at times but the author reins them in sufficiently so we can capture the zeitgeist of a generation, clueless but well-meaning, complacent yet ambitious. It is especially interesting to compare the "baby boomers" with our current youth who genuinely don't have it so good.

So, plenty of food thought here in this insightful, extremely readable novel. You might not like the characters but you will develop an understanding of what motivates them and how their emotional and social inheritance moulded them this way. A very interesting, well written novel which will make you think, long after the final page is turned.

As my introduction to the work of Linda Grant I found this a thoroughly engrossing book which sucked me into the smells and sounds of every decade inhabited by its characters. As a "baby boomer" myself who lived in both Oxford and London at the same time as Stephen and Andrea, I thought the description of life and attitudes was uncannily accurate - consequently I could identify with the main characters and become absorbed into their transition from hippy students to ageing grandparents.
Linda Grant's style is crisp yet detailed - her portrayal of decent but flawed people is such that I cared about every generation of the family. I felt sorry to reach the end of the book.

Stephen Newman is getting older and is finding it difficult to come to terms with the way his life has turned out. What happened to his hopes and ambitions, to the generation that was going to change the world?

We Had It So Good follows the story of Stephen and his family over several decades during the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. At times reading this book was almost like watching one of those nostalgic television documentaries that show us snapshots of life in previous decades. As the years go by we see how Stephen and Andrea change over time and have had to abandon some of their dreams - but with Stephen in particular there's always that feeling of regret, that he's settled for second-best, and he does at one point decide that "that was what life was, perennially settling for less".

The book doesn't have much of a plot, concentrating instead on painting a detailed and realistic portrait of the Newman family. Despite the lack of action though, there are still some moments of drama - mainly the types of small dramas that most people will experience in their lifetime - and there were even a few surprises and revelations that I didn't see coming.

Linda Grant's writing is of a high quality and she develops her characters in great detail from their appearance and the clothes they wear, to their likes and dislikes, hopes and fears. And yet throughout the first half of the book I didn't feel any personal involvement in their story and always felt slightly detached from what was going on. Although the Newmans and their friends felt believable and real to me, I didn't think I liked them enough to want to spend 340 pages reading about their everyday lives. But halfway through the book I started to warm to some of the characters and as a result, the story became more compelling. And once I had settled into the pace of the writing, I started to enjoy it.

It was interesting to see how Stephen as an American (with a Polish immigrant father and a Cuban mother) adapted to life in England, first at Oxford and then in London. I also liked reading about the relationship between Stephen and his father, Si. Stephen and Andrea's daughter, Marianne, is another intriguing character. And this review wouldn't be complete without mentioning Andrea's best friend, Grace, who is quite a sad and solitary figure, trying to run away from her past. Although she's not the most pleasant of people, with a hard, prickly personality, I was far more interested in Grace than in the Newmans.

I should point out that I'm probably not really the target audience for this book and although I did end up enjoying it, I can see that it would probably be appreciated more by readers of Stephen and Andrea's generation. However, the book still left me with a lot of things to think about, from bigger issues such as immigration, family relationships and generational differences to the smaller ones, such as the principles behind the advertising of washing powder!