Anthem Book

Tim Binding is a novelist ever open to the dramatic possibilities of how grand historical events can cause ripples that devastate ordinary communities. With Anthem things are little more diffuse, partly because, although this is primarily about the Falklands War, Binding weaves a further four instances from history into his tale. Only the inclusion of the very last event feels like an audacious plot twist too far. The book's epicentre is Anglefield Road, a seemingly unremarkable suburban street in the UK. When it's first described Binding employs tellingly a series of nautical metaphors. Anglefield is "a liner, vast and twinkling, carrying the sleep dreams of pyjamaed husbands and night-dressed wives, their unforgiving sons and daughters." And continuing in a similar vein, "beyond where the Armstrongs, the Plimsolls, the Millens and the Roaches dwell, washing up against the bow of their long and narrow gardens, lies the uncharted sea of the railway embankment." The fate of the good ship Anglefield and all who sail on her quickly proves to be inextricably bound to that of the Canberra, the requisitioned liner journeying to the Falklands. Anglefield resident Suzy Plimsoll and her husband Matty are members of its crew. For their neighbour Richard Roach, a shoe salesman with a Machiavellian boss to outwit, the Canberra inspires a marketing stunt that he hopes will prop up his flagging reputation. By a quirk of chance, of which this novel has more than its fair share, Binding's love of kismet is positively Dickensian on occasions--also aboard the Canberra as a bandsman is Richard's childhood friend Henry. (A twin life shaped by circumstance was a feature of Binding's earlier novel A Perfect Execution and the son of Jeremiah, the protagonist, has a cameo role here.) Richard and Henry were both Dr Barnardo's ball boys in the 1961 Wimbledon semi-final but Henry has connections of his own to Anglefield Road. At the age of six on a day trip to London, he became separated from his mother in the great fog of 1952. His only possession was a copy of A House at Pooh Corner inscribed with the words "This book belongs to Henry Armstrong and I live in Anglefield Road." This volume, as you might suspect, plays no small part in the novel's gripping dénouement in those "most surprising of circumstances". Anthem is a bold work, gracefully written, full of tragedy, humour and pathos; Binding has a marvellous eye for detail, especially when it comes to character. Not all of it entirely convinces--for a novel set largely in 1982, the year when unemployment topped three million, no-one appears that perturbed by the idea of losing, or abandoning their jobs--but in its scope and ambition it's a British novel that can make a serious claim to beat those Great American classics at their own game. --Travis ElboroughRead More