Neville Watchurst

Philip Hensher's latest novel is about politics - more specifically, what happens to our political beliefs as we get older. It's a commonplace fact that people become more conservative as they get older, but Hensher's novel focuses more on what this process looks like from the perspective of a narrator who refuses to follow this tendency.

The novel is narrated in first person by "Spike" who, in his youth, is impressed by the left-wing ideas of a fellow schoolboy named Percy Ogden. Spike is then introduced to Ogden circle: Joachin, a revolutionary from Chile who becomes Spike's life partner; James Frinton, a charming fraud who becomes Home Secretary; Percy Ogden, an uncharming fraud who follows a political career in the Labour Party; Mohammad, a working-class boy with whom Spike gradually falls out of touch; and
Tracy Cunningham, Mohammed's former lover, and a misfit who changes her politics and her name (to Alexandra) in university.

After this initial set-up, Spike provides us with various vignettes showing how these ardently left-wing revolutionaries turned out. The most interesting is Spike's trip with Percy Ogden to East Germany during the early 1980s, in which Ogden's monstrous selfishness becomes glaringly obvious - quite simply, his political stance is grounded not in any kind of moral belief, but purely from his lust for power.

A holiday in a remote part of Germany brings an aging Spike and Joachin back into contact with Peter Frinton, James's brother. Through this episode we learn that James and Tracy had a casual romantic attachment while in university, and during this time James had written her various embarrassing letters. James was the last person to see Tracy before her death (presumably alcohol-related), and Spike strongly suspects James of engaging in some kind of foul play in order to get his letters back.

A Small Revolution in Germany has some minor flaws as a novel. I didn't particularly care for the character of Joachin, for instance, and his presence in the story seemed dangerously close to the kind of virtue-signally that Percy Ogden gets up to later in his career. Spike also seems too undamaged by his life and experiences to be fully realistic.

Nonetheless, what really shines about Hensher's novel is its central theme of existential compromise, which is built on Marx's famous observation in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that history repeats itself "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." As someone who has held onto my revolutionary politics over the years, I have been repeatedly dismayed to see the people I knew in my youth return to the conservative beliefs of their parents. I really felt Spike's pain and disappointment in this regard, and its broader resonance in the arena of British politics must carry a similar weight.… (mehr)