Pauline Melville, Eating Air, (London: Telegram, 2009), pp. 476. £7.99
ISBN: 978-1-84659-081-8
A Satirical Exploration of Socio-political Impotence
A fascinating and controversial idea – a diverse group of 1970s revolutionaries link up with Islamist militants of the 2000s. In this amalgamation of the old with the new, with a thirty year narrative gap in-between, Melville raises a number of thought-provoking questions relevant to the paranoid post September-11 political scene. The style is comic; the language is poetic and original with many moments of descriptive excellence. Flitting back and forth between London, Brazil, Italy and Surinam, interlinked by the theme of terrorism, the novel uses a kaleidoscope of characters to develop the plot.
The characters include the playwright Victor Skynnard, a utopian architect who never builds anything, representing the fading left-wingers and another two seventies radicals: Hector Rossi and Mark Scobie. Islamic terrorists Shahid and Massoud manifest contemporary religious fanaticism: 'Communism didn't work. Capitalism doesn’t work. The only solution left is Islam'. Melville exposes the wide range of intentions and beliefs that lead to 'terrorist acts'. The author controversially questions the operations and judgements of the secret services by presenting them as the instigator of terrorist attacks.
The link between the two revolutionary groups is Khaled, Hector’s Palestinian comrade on the Paris barricades in the 1970s. Hector’s friendship with Khaled makes him nostalgic for his rebellious past; gambling freely with his life made him feel almost ‘skyborne’. The danger and adrenaline of his past life has since been replaced with domestic thrall. Losing his political motivation as he realises how anachronistic today’s political situation has become, he feels the need to acquiesce to a normal life. Melville satirises the earlier generation of revolutionaries by showing that the radicals in the present day are the Islamists. The promise of the 1970s radicalism is now somewhat exhausted and is eradicating with it the hope for change.
The book focuses in on the sensual Surinam-born Ella de Vries, a young ballet dancer who brings exoticism into the novel. Attracted to danger, Ella falls in love with Donny Mcleod, an itinerant labourer who is ‘too anarchistic even to be in the group of anarchists’. The intertwining of their lives draws Ella into radical circles and she becomes a catalyst for a succession of events that lead to an audacious ending. Melville’s view is that extremism not only exists in politics but in religion and in love as well.
Despite the clever conglomeration of characters, their characterisation is arguably underdeveloped, provoking less empathy than could have been achieved. The shocking impact the end intends to create is resultantly less effective. Also, switching from chapters about MI5 to the chronicles of Donny and Ella detracts from the atmosphere of political tension. Other books such as the Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman manage this difficult balance between a love story and a political allegory by allowing more insight into the characters and the society.
Overall, Melville’s ability to mesh a wide-set of characters and keep them distinctive from one another is impressive. A multiplicity of themes is skilfully set up: political anxieties, terrorism, anarchism and a love story at the heart of it all. Eating Air in its fusion of love and politics proves to be an intriguing read that appeals on an intellectual and sensual dimension.
