Modern Love Book

There was a lot of stuff in Jess's chapter that wasn't really about her or her family at all; it was more about the place they came from and things like unemployment and divorce and the times they were living in. In Paul Magrs' Modern Love, there is a lot of stuff that is about Jess's and her twin sister Jude's family, and about "unemployment and divorce and the times they were living in". As a record of life in Britain from the 1960s to the late 1990s it could be shocking and depressing, but the universal signifiers of later-20th century popular culture make it familiar to us all. Princess Diana plays a significant role in marking the passage of time--from her wedding to her death and her afterlife--while the advent of colour televisions, video recorders, PIN numbers and even working-class girls going to university, shows how Britain has ostensibly changed. Yet through these changes for the consumer and society, Magrs seems to be showing that people and families don't change. The story follows Christine Fletcher and her family, from her personal sexual liberation of the 1960s, her mum's sudden departure, her twin daughters who she makes believe belong to her husband, and the death and abandonment they all suffer. Magrs pulls us into his world of grim north-east housing estates, of low expectations and hopes unfulfilled, so that the depression and problems are seen in close-up, saturating the skin of the reader and cloying the breath, making us live them until they no longer seem unbearably miserable. Instead, the strength of emotions--whether of love, fear or hatred--make the characters real. When Jess, the quieter twin who surprises us all, reads an academic's study of her childhood--and her special "case"--she realises that this is merely saying what her form teacher at school said: an unhappy home life leads to a disturbed child, and upbringing can be hard to escape. Magrs himself makes this point when Jude, the high-achieving twin who seems about to join the professional and moneyed classes, ends up with similar men and mothering problems to her mother and grandmother. However, Modern Love is written as a novel to be lived, not to be analysed, and Magrs manages this in an unassuming, yet vivid style. While it leaves you pondering the injustices of society, it also makes you wonder if you can ever escape those injustices. --Olivia DickinsonRead More