A Son of the Rock

Virago, 2004. 322p

du Maurier is not my usual choice of reading matter but the good lady got this out of the library and I was intrigued by the premise.

Originally published in 1972, the novel perhaps illustrates du Maurier’s lingering resentment at the influx of US troops to Cornwall during WW2 and at the time of writing to the possible transformation of Cornwall into nothing but a theme park. The book extends this concern to Britain as a whole.

The UK has left the EU and is apparently bankrupt. Its inhabitants wake up one morning to no news on TV or radio and the presence of US troops on their streets. A union between the UK and the US (to be called USUK) has been arranged and imposed from on high. The book is concerned with the impact of all this on a strange mongrel household presided over by a determined matriarch, known as Mad.

du Maurier of course does not take this in the direction an SF writer would have done. Her focus is firmly on the locality – in and around a small town in Cornwall – though wider events are mentioned. Egged on by Mad, civil disobedience blooms and is presented as a trigger for the rest of the country to begin to resist the changes.

Despite the murder of a US serviceman, the destruction of a US warship and various other incidents there is a lightness of touch to the narration and as a result there is little sense of real jeopardy for the main characters, and a consequent failure to ensure the necessary suspension of disbelief.

Perhaps, though, the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan might have benefited from reading this book as they may have gained more insight into how resentments at such takeovers are easily stirred, and not so easily calmed.