Two Tribes by Chris Beckett

Corvus, 2021, 283 p.

Two Tribes is narrated as if by a historian called Zoe from 250 years in the future. She lives in a post-Catastrophe England now under the rule of something known as The Guiding Body which consists of “qualified, able and scientifically minded people the Liberals now regard as the correct way to run the country.” The world is globally warmed, with parts barely habitable. What were roads are now underwater, with boardwalks at first floor level to allow access to buildings’ upper floors. Praying mantises are a common sight. Culture is heavily Chinese influenced after a Protectorate which helped the Guiding Body into power. The currency is the yuan. Militiamen patrol the streets, their goggles giving them information about everybody. The poor work on flood defences and in one scene are patronised by an official.

As well as having access to twenty-first century social media records Zoe has come across the diaries of two people from our time, before the Warring Factions era. These are Harry, an architect, and Michelle, a hairdresser, but who actually met and whose differing attitudes she sees as a precursor to the times now in her past. Despite her friend Cally’s reservations Zoe conceives of writing Harry and Michelle’s history in the form of a novel to illustrate the beginnings of how her society came to pass saying that the past’s remoteness makes it comforting.

The bulk of Two Tribes is made up of that novel and describes the evolution of the relationship between its two protagonists, one from either side of the Brexit debate, each impatient of the other and each embarrassed by their families and friends but each beginning to accommodate the other’s viewpoint.

This is a subtle but risky piece of writing by Beckett. Subtle because it captures the slightly off note that manuscripts by inexperienced writers tend to have; but risky since it may fail to provide the richer satisfactions readers find from more accomplished practitioners.

Beckett renders that unpolished type of writing (the kind of story treatment that we’re often told authors who are later successful have consigned to a drawer in the deepest part of their desk, never to be resurrected) well; the unnecessary repetition of information, the going over the same ground in a slightly different context, some characters who are little more than mouthpieces and others who at times lean over into the cartoonish, the somewhat stark oppositions between those with contrasting attitudes, the necessity for Zoe to explain things to her putative readership which do not need explanations to Beckett’s readers. (For example, the derivation of the term Brexit.)

The sections set in the future of course do not suffer from any of that and read as assuredly as any “normal” novel. Whether that is enough in this case to offset the infelicities of the part supposedly written by Zoe is debatable.

 

Pedant’s corner:- “He had no other marketable skills other than designing buildings” (has one ‘other’ too many,) “men and woman pole shallow punts” (women,) reindeers (the plural of reindeer is reindeer,) “as a way booting nuisances upstairs” (as a way of booting.) “The rest of the party were already there” (the rest … was already there,) “counts out the points out with gusto” (has one ‘out’ too many.)

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