Life an exploded diagram by Mal Peet

This is a wonderful coming of age book set against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis.  The book opens with the birth of Clem Ackroyd at the end of WWII in 1945 and continues through to 2001.  Clem Ackroyd is born to working class parents in Norfolk and we get a wonderful sense of his life and the characters of his parents and his grandmother who live with him are finely drawn and realised. The book is told through Clem’s eyes and he takes us back in time from 2001 where he is a designer living in New York.  The book centres around his family and their relationships and also Clem’s teenage years as a student on a scholarship to a grammar school.  Clem has defied the social laws and got uppity and above himself and won a scholarship to a grammar school along with his friend Goz who is a wonderfully drawn character whose dry wit is a great foil to Clem’s character. The class system in England is beautifully portrayed in Peet’s book and Clem is under no illusions that his scholarship gives him education but no privileges so it is rather hopelessly that he falls in love with the local gentries daughter Frankie and begins a first romance with her.  Their romance is carried out clandestinely against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis. It is at this point that Peet oscillates between giving us a precise account of the personalities involved in the crisis and their impact on world history and the growing relationship between Clem and Frankie. Peet gives us a sense of how history affects us at so many levels and his assessment of how close we came to nuclear war in 1962 and how mad some of those closest to power were is chilling. Clem and Frankie’s passion and love is beautifully realised by Peet but underlying their relationship is a desperation born not only of its clandestine nature, but also the class differences and the fact that time seems against them. It is fitting that Clem chooses to read Andrew Marvel’s to his coy mistress to Frankie. And their world does explode but not courtesy of the Cuban missile crisis but rather an unexploded mine from WWII which rips their families and them apart.   This a tender, funny and engrossing read which will make you think, laugh and remind you of how history really does have an impact on our lives.

Rita@ Hawthorn

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