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Email a friendRepeating anti-communist cliches
DYLAN once sang about A Simple Twist Of Fate and this concept is explored in a novel about how modern history could have been altered by such twists of fate.
Part one is short but promising and covers the early years of Robbie Coyle growing up in the 1960s in a working-class socialist family in Scotland. His parents can barely keep up with his vivid imagination and quest for knowledge.
Unfortunately, it then all falls apart in the lengthy middle section.
Suddenly, Scotland is part of a communist state that emerged out of the 1946 revolution. Now a young man, Coyle has been transferred to a closed military town and is being trained for a dangerous space mission.
Sadly, the author's portrait of a Scotland under communist rule could have come straight out a scare story planted by the CIA in the right-wing press at the height of the cold war. Every cliche and prejudice is paraded and all are left unchallenged.
Part three reverts to the present and contains an unsympathetic portrait of Coyle's now elderly parents.
The lingering impression from this clearly autobiographical novel is that Crumley is politically naive and has deep-rooted issues about his parents, their working-class background and politics. If so, can we ask that he deals with these issues in private in future.
RICHARD HILTON