Hearts and Minds – BooksPlease

I like novels that have an underlying theme or themes that gradually impinge upon my mind as I read; themes that become clear often only after I’ve finished reading. There is no doubt about the theme of Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig. Although it begins with a murder its main focus is a passionate denunciation of the treatment of illegal immigrants, thinly disguised as a novel. The characters are mouthpieces for the condemnation of social injustice.

It is page after page of unrelenting misery. Poverty and prejudice, squalor and suffering, prostitution, racism, illegal immigrants, and life in desperate circumstances. There is no relief from the images of brutality, fear, hatred, misery, and helplessness and evil, danger, deceit and terror abound.

In the midst of all this is Polly, a single mum and a lawyer working on behalf of illegal immigrants, employing them as au-pairs, cleaners and taxi-drivers. Whatever she does she feel guilty, exhausted, oppressed and in a mess. It rubbed off on me as I read this book, long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

It begins with the murder of a young woman, whose body is dumped in a pond on Hampstead Heath, then meanders through a whole host of characters (some one-dimensional) before the relationships (in some cases it seems forced) between them become clear. The main characters, apart from Polly, are all immigrants living in London, Job an illegal taxi driver from Zimbabwe, Ian, an idealistic supply teacher, from South Africa, Katie from New York working for a political magazine, and Anna, a teenager from the Ukraine, trafficked into sexual slavery.

It is heart-rending, but totally depressing reading. I could only read it in short bursts. It’s depiction of life in London today is harsh, and criticises the British who aren’t willing to do the work carried out by immigrants and complain that life in Britain is no longer the same with jobs are being taken from them. It asserts that it is only the immigrants who do work such as nursing and taxi-driving, teaching and cleaning. Reading this book should deter anyone from wanting to live here, particularly in London. Everything comes in for criticism from the NHS to the state school system. There are not only illegal immigrants but also asylum seekers, trafficked under-age prostitutes, suicidal Moslems, mindless journalists and the idle rich.

I can see that this is a worthy book, a serious book and yet I found I just couldn’t warm to it. I’m waiting with interest to see if it makes the Orange Prize shortlist, to be announced on 20 April.

Not much reading here today as D and I are off out with the family this afternoon.

This morning I’ll be reading more from Griff Rhys Jones’s memoir Semi-Detached, which is coming on nicely. I’m now up to the part where Griff is in his final year at school. I loved his description of cricket that I read yesterday.

I hate and abhor cricket. I loathe cricket. I abominate cricket. There is only one thing more boring than the abysmal English habit of watching a game of cricket and that is an afternoon playing the wretched game. It is sport for the indolently paralysed. Only three people out of twenty two are engaged in any proper activity. The rest simply sit and wait their turn.

The excruciating tedium of ‘fielding’ – standing about, like a man in a queue with nothing to read, in case a sequence of repetitive events, ponderously unfolding in front of you, should suddenly require your direct intervention … (page 179)

Football is a game. Tiddly-winks is a game. A sack race involves energy and fun. Cricket is like a cucumber sandwich: indulged in for reasons of tradition, despite being totally eclipsed by every other alternative on offer. (page 181)

I can well imagine that fielding would be much more pleasurable if one could read at the same time. One of my fond memories of childhood is going with my parents to watch cricket, but then I did used to lie in the grass making daisy chains.

I’d like to finish reading Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig this evening, if I have time before I fall asleep. I have very mixed ideas about it right now, varying from liking it to wishing I’d never bothered to pick it up. It’s a tough read – from a subject point of view, that is. This is by no means a ‘comfy’ read, more of a rollercoaster to batter and bruise. But I must finish it before writing about it properly.

Coming up next week I’m looking forward to reading one of these books:

Take My Breath Away by Martin Edwards
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
The Christmas Thief by Mary Higgins Clark
King Arthur’s Bones by the Medieval Murderers

At the moment it’s King Arthur’s Bones that is calling out to me. It’s five interlinked mysteries from Michael Jecks, Susanna Gregory, Bernard Knight, Ian Morson and Philip Gooden.