Guy Ware’s fifth novel, Our Island Story, borrows its title from ‘A Child’s History of England’ written by H E Marshall and first published in 1905. Ignoring for the moment the inconvenient fact that England is not an island, Ware’s reference is undoubtedly deliberate, a nod towards the exceptionalist view that England / Britain was / is forged with a particular destiny, and perhaps best exemplified by the view that any suggestion the British Empire may not have been a ‘good thing’ is unpatriotic. (That it is also David Cameron’s favourite childhood book is merely an added extra, though entirely appropriate given that his misguided Brexit referendum allowed English nationalism a return to the centre stage of politics).
In Ware’s Our Island Story, however, the island is much smaller – perhaps best seen as a microcosm of England – but, like the UK, threatened by the sea:
“The Island was sinking. Or the sea was rising. It depended on what you believed about how it got there in the first place. Either way, it had been going on for years, bits falling into the sea, bits swallowed up.”
While (hopefully) no one yet believes that the UK is sinking into the sea, this theory is propagated by ‘Simulationists’ who believed that “the island had been artificially simulated by a secret cabal of behavioural scientists.” It is, of course, no more unbelievable than any other conspiracy theory (though I love the addition of the suspicion that “the money had dried up and the Simulators had moved on to pastures new”) and resonates with the now cliched science fiction trope that Earth is an alien experiment, but is used largely to demonstrate how conspiracy theories are used by politicians.
In fact, most of the characters in Our Island Story are politicians of one sort or another. The novel opens with Denis Klamm returning to the Island for the funeral of his father (K), an ex-Leader. His mother, Cora, still has political ambitions but has lost the most recent election, which was won by the daughter of the most recent Leader, Jessica King. Cora does not have a high opinion of her ‘idiot’ son: when Jessica compliments him on the reading of a poem at the funeral, she comments:
“He sounded like a fucking robot reciting a railway timetable.”
Jessica’s advent as Leader has come at the expense of her father, Jacob, engineered in part by Ari, previously Jacob’s righthand man, who has switched sides, in part to fulfil an island legend – “the Child could not become the Leader without challenging its father.” However, he now has to contend with the fact that Jessica is more of an idealist:
“Ari hadn’t catered for a Leader who hadn’t realised that hope was just another form of cynicism.”
In particular, Jessica wants to end the homelessness caused by the Island’s shrinking geography, whereas Ari is more concerned with pitting his enemies against one another. Denis, meanwhile, is another kind of idealist – a less practical one. Having (in his view) fallen in love with Jessica, he decides the best way to get her attention is to chain himself to a bridge. His lack of foresight is demonstrated when he is joined by Pavel (the taxi driver who took him to the bridge) and his ‘sister’ Eva. When they wish to be free again, they simply wriggle out of their chains:
“You don’t think we’d be dumb enough to wrap ourselves in chains we couldn’t escape for, do you?”
Even the love which prompted his sacrifice is transient as he finds himself increasingly attracted to Eva.
Denis’ story is an example of the comedy Ware injects into the novel, yet it also adds to the atmosphere of hopelessness – a futile effort, as futile as the debate over whether the Island is real or a simulation as, either way, no one is intending to take any action that might improve the lives of the Islanders (sound familiar?). Ware satirises contemporary Britain in numerous ways without overloading the novel as the island setting ensures each aspect of comparison is concrete, and the small cast of characters keeps its interactions credible. And so, we have a small group of people, often related, passing power around; debates and even referenda designed simply to create conflict and hinder action; and carefully a curated mythology used to make elevation to power seem inevitable. Ware even manages to throw in an inquiry into police brutality that is constantly delayed, and a spad who is also a poet.
Our Island Story is distressingly recognisable: Ware’s comic scenario produces a mirror-image that is no laughing matter.
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