Untied Kingdom by James Lovegrove
01/05/2003 . Source: Paul Skevington 

Pub: Gollancz. 404 page enlarged paperback or hardback. Price: £10.99 (UK-paperback) or £17.99 (UK-hardback). ISBN: 0-575-07386-1 (paperback) 0-575-07385-3 (hardback).

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In the current climate of political uncertainty with the looming prospect of another Gulf War on the horizon as I read this, I was enthralled by the prospect of reading a book with a subject matter that was so unusually relevant to present events. ‘Untied Kingdom’ is set in a fictional England that has become the victim of its own economy and the interference of the International Community (the International Community being a thinly disguised United Nations).

An economic collapse has lead to a complete disintegration of the country's infrastructure, centralised governmental rule has ended and the land has returned to a semi-feudalistic state where individual towns and villages scratch a living out of the dirt as best they can. People survive without any of the conveniences we enjoy.

There is no power and very little fuel to power mechanical equipment such as cars or generators. On top of this, the International Community (lead by America it seems) have bombed much of the country into utter ruin in an effort to control the chaotic situation that presides over the nation. This effort only succeeds in increasing the misery of England's citizens in an eerie parallel of what may potentially currently befall the people of Iraq.

Into this turmoil, Lovegrove introduces the two main characters whose stories will form the main narrative drive of the novel. Fen Morris is a man who lives in a small village called Downbourne.

The town managed to cope with the crisis quite successfully by establishing a strong self-sufficient community, centred on the leadership of an enigmatic figure called The Green Man.

In return for goods and services, Fen aids the town by continuing in his role as a teacher to a small group of children, whose parents hope that gaining an education may still help their progeny to better their chances in later life. Fen's situation is complicated by the fact that his long-term marriage to Moira has fallen apart over the last year. This is due to a terrible event that befell the two of them, which seems to have irrevocably soured their relationship.

Shortly after, we are introduced to this community a band of thugs from a London gang arrive in Downbourne. They kidnap Moira and many of the other women from the village. Fen decides to go in chase of them to get his wife back. From which point, the novel turns into a road trip adventure as we follow Fen on his journey to London. Occasionally, the narrative shifts to Moira's point of view, allowing us a glimpse of the continuing struggles of the Downbourne women.

Sounds exciting, right? Unfortunately, the book never lives up to its fascinating premise and quickly degenerates into a clichéd and ultimately unsatisfactory attempt at speculative fiction, which reads like a book that has been consigned to the bottom of the Booker Prize reject pile.

The moment when the novel began to fail for me came when I was assailed by a familiarly unpleasant sinking feeling as I realised I knew what was going to happen next. For me, the mark of a true storyteller is in their ability to confound your expectations of what should happen and amaze you with what does happen.

Unfortunately, Lovegrove quickly falls into a highly conventional style of narrative that fails to surprise almost as often as it fails to entertain. Indeed, some of the episodes depicted are so remarkably similar to each other that it was often an effort to force myself to continue to read. This conventionality is enforced by Lovegrove's persistence in using stereotypical archetypes to depict everyone except his main characters.

The London gang that invades Downbourne are a bunch of skinheads in football shirts straight out of an ITV documentary on hooliganism. At one point, Lovegrove describes them bobbing their heads in unison to 'rock music', for as anyone who has seen any modern films knows, the bad guys always listen to heavy metal. Their leader is the only one who is granted even a modicum of individuality, albeit of the tired 'soft-hearted boss of nasty hard men' variety.

Even more reprehensible is the moment when Fen is placed in the position of tutoring some children from an affluent background and reflects on how much better it is to be given the opportunity of teaching pupils who are of course universally intelligent, unlike the poor common Downbourne kids he taught previously.

Lovegrove's attempts to stray away from this formula actually succeed in making the book worse. There is one particularly laughable moment when a dog pack hunts Fen down and Lovegrove switches to the narrative perspective of one of the dogs themselves, a section that reads like an unskilled parody of Watership Down.

There are moments of great promise however. The finale of the book is successfully didactic whilst being simultaneously emotionally moving, a difficult task at the best of times. It is an event that almost makes it worth struggling to the end of the novel.

Lovegrove never actively bores and there were several moments when I found myself chuckling at Fen's observations of the characters he meets. Most importantly, Lovegrove's unfortunately rare comments regarding the way the International Community has treated England are incisive and thought-provoking and would possibly be a beneficial read for the leaders of certain well-known western democracies.

Although the novel is far from being amongst the worst that I have read, the neglectful way in which Lovegrove wastes such an interesting idea leaves me feeling more antipathy towards it than I might have done otherwise.

Where I wished for a greater expansion of the events that brought England down, for greater detail of the world in which the author's characters live, Lovegrove only provided tawdry and episodic vignettes that consistently failed to impress.

A missed opportunity from a writer who could do far better.

Paul Skevington