CHALCOT CRESCENT
Fay Weldon
Atlantic, $35, pbk
If you are a fan of Fay Weldon's fiction you will enjoy the sparkle of Chalcot Crescent, which is her 29th novel.
Although the structure is flawed, the chief character, 80-year-old Frances, is deeply interesting and is used by Weldon, as she has often in her fiction, to express the author's take on contemporary society.
It is a bleak vision, be warned, but not unjustified.
Weldon has created Frances out of the idea that had her mother not miscarried, she would have been her younger sister.
Apart from brief references to their time in New Zealand, the sisters are not developed as characters and Frances soon takes over as a voice, rather than a personality, while Fay disappears to Australia and is not heard of again.
Thereafter, Frances tells us about her house in Chalcot Crescent, some features of her life, career and regrets there over the years, with husbands and lovers and children (sometimes repetitively, in the manner of the aged).
We learn she is a Dame, knighted for her writing skills and her leftish politics.
Beyond that, not much.
Hers is a character upon which to focus ideas.
What we soon discover is that the biggest idea is the novel's description of dystopia, forecast for the present - it is set in 2013 - as the world and Britain in particular adjusts to the fallout from decades of selfishness, corruption, over-population, and the consequences of "global warming" and the Great Recession.
As it is explained by Frances, the place is run by a National Union Government formed not from politicians but from sociologists, scientists and the like, who feed the population on tasty National Meat Loaf made, it is suspected, from protein provided by stem cells.
All the basic commodities and services are rationed or simply not available other than to the elite.
It seems some of Frances' children belong to Redpeace, an underground group trying to overthrow the NUG, who use the Chalcot Crescent house and its empty neighbour as a base where they can hold their kidnapped victim Victor - one of the NUG's leaders and married to one of Frances' daughters - to ransom.
But Frances, ultimately proving to be just as selfish as everyone else, spills the beans to the ever-watching security forces, and enjoys the rewards.
Frances is given many opportunities to express her reflections on the the decades of excess, from feminism through to the era of mortgages-on-demand, of which she has been both an enthusiastic participant and eventual victim.
The novel's great strength lies in its sketch, as enunciated by Frances, of the excesses of the post-1960s through to the present day.
That she shrugs off these consequences and abandons the shreds of her remaining principles to "go with the flow" is surely a metaphor for the times.
Some have classified the book as science fiction, but I don't think Chalcot Crescent is truly that, and I suspect by setting it as near to the present day as 2013, nor did Weldon.
The Apocalypse may indeed be nigh, but it is not that nigh.
Her intent, I imagine, was to warn that if we continue the way we have been behaving and living, then it is closer than we think.
It is very much a novel of its times.
Frances is a brilliantly drawn character as, to a lesser extent, is her grandson Amos, another dissolute consequence of her reckless style of life.
The remaining cast are mere cutouts but it doesn't seem to matter much, so entranced are we by Frances.
Bryan James is the Books Editor.
