When I Lived in Modern Times (2000)
Who wrote it?
Linda Grant (1951- ; active 1993-), born Liverpool, England. Both her Liverpool roots and her Jewish heritage (she is the child of a Polish-Jewish father and Russian-Jewish mother) are reflected in her fiction. She studied English at the University of York, before completing postgraduate work in Canada.
She returned to England in 1985, beginning her career as a journalist writing for the Guardian. Her first published book was a non-fiction work, Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution (1993).
Her debut novel, The Cast Iron Shore (1995) won the David Higham (best first novel) Prize and she took the Orange/Women's Prize with this, only her second. She has won awards for subsequent works of non-fiction as well as being nominated for the Booker in 2008 for The Clothes on their Backs, and the Women's Prize again in 2017 for The Dark Circle. She was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2014.
What's it about?
When I Lived in Modern Times is the story of Evelyn Sert, a 20-year old hairdresser from Soho, of Latvian-Jewish heritage. After the war, she sets sail for Palestine, aiming to be part of the creation of a "new Jewish world" along with the refugees and idealists gathering there.
This is a Palestine still under the last throes of British colonial rule, and Evelyn is uncertain of her place in the embroyonic years of the creation of the Jewish nation. Unable to speak Hebrew (or in fact any languages other than English) she is initially at the whims of those around her, spending her first confusing months in a kibbutz before hitching a ride to the idealistic White City of Tel Aviv with the mysterious Johnny.
It turns out that Johnny is actually Levi (or potentially Ephraim, or neither) - a terrorist working for the Irgun in co-ordinating anti-British attacks. The novel's tone shifts away from idealism to the brutality and violence around the end of British rule, and ends with a poignant coda of a modern-day Evelyn returning to Tel Aviv many years later.
What I liked
While some have criticized the novel’s over-reliance on historical explication, I actually found it to be a really engrossing and satisfying read. It focuses on a specific and interesting period in the history of the Jewish people - in which the horrors of the Second World War are still fresh and a desire to carve out an identity via a nation state is fresh but far from accomplished.
Evelyn is an interesting choice of character to focus on. She’s somewhat lacking in purpose and identity at the start of the novel, and passive to the point of naivete - but she’s an endearing idealist who wants to play some sort of role in building a “future” that she has no idea of. Again, other reviews have criticized the fact that her character never seems fixed, but this is a time of flux and uncertainty and her own lack of identity is clearly part of the point - she’s searching for something to call her own, and has no real idea of what that looks like.
In the context of Evelyn’s own development, she finds a certain identity in her attempt to transcend what the German-Jewish locals perjoratively describe as her “Ostjuden” background, but generally she’s thrown around between groups with differing visions of what the future looks like. She wears a number of disguises through the novel and throws in her lot with a terrorist master of disguise - evidently her identity in this period is deliberately being shown to be unformed, in flux. I liked this, rather than seeing it as an issue.
Amongst all this, there’s a rather compelling sense of adventure in the novel. Despite the large amounts of historical content, it still reads as a page-turning thriller, with all the attendant peril that implies, as well as a likeable romanticism.
The conclusion may feel a little rushed, but I think it’s powerful in its reframing of Evelyn’s youthful idealism in the light of a relatively conventional life she has subsequently lived - with its everyday concerns of marriage, parenthood and human tragedy within that. There’s an evocative look at the fate of Tel Aviv’s architectural vision, fallen into disrepair. And before all of that, a brief acknowledgement of Evelyn’s one moment - notably after her adventures in Palestine - that she was ‘privileged to have lived in modern times’.
What I didn’t like
Despite the rich historical research that has clearly gone into this novel, it’s clear that it’s necessarily only a perspective on this critical and highly controversial historical moment. The Arab voice in the novel is notably missing - with the struggle over Palestine seen more as a moment of transition between British and Jewish voices. That’s undoubtedly problematic - but it’s less obvious as to how deliberate this is. The novel is, after all. seen almost exclusively through Evelyn’s somewhat naive eyes and I’m not fully sure as to whether we can expect a rounded historical assessment as a result.
Food & drink pairings
Cake and pastries, any time of day
Cigarettes
Fun facts
Grant was a surprise winner in 2000, with the press and bookmakers largely assuming that White Teeth, a huge popular success, had it in the bag.
The fact that both were at the top of the contender list, though, was seen as a strong rebuke to the previous years’ criticisms of the lack of Brits on the US-dominated 1999 shortlist.
The immediate aftermath of Grant's win was soured by accusations of plagiarism, with an anonymous faxer alleging that she was guilty of quoting verbatim chunks from A. J. Sherman's Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine 1918-48. The paperback edition of Grant's book available at the time had already acknowledged her debt to Sherman's work, so the accusation (and its timing) was seen as somewhat needlessly malicious.
As ever, John Crace’s Digested Read of this (in the Guardian) is hilarious and manages to make it sound almost entirely worthless. Despite my enjoyment of the book, I still very much like this takedown.
Grant has a pragmatic view of her win, and literary prizes in general, as expressed in 2012:
“Prizes give one novelist a chance; a chance to go on writing, to produce a body of work, to do so without financial anxiety. It's an unfair lottery, but the level playing field is one on which many writers simply have to give up.”
Vanquished Foes
Judy Budnitz (If I Told You Once)
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne (The Dancers Dancing)
Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
Elizabeth Strout (Amy and Isabelle)
Rebecca Wells (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood)
The obviously excellent White Teeth aside, I haven’t read any of these. Any tips?
2000’s Booker Prize went to Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, which also showed up on the 2001 Women’s Prize shortlist.
Context
In 2000:
Draft assembly of the Human Genome Project announced
George W. Bush defeats Al Gore in US Presidential election following controversial recount in Florida
Doctor Harold Shipman found guilty of mass murder of patients in Manchester, England in the 90s
Concorde crash just after takeoff in Paris kills all on board
Oresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden officially opens for traffic
First resident crew board the International Space Station
France become first football team to hold World Cup and European Championship simultaneously
AOL purchases Time Warner, the largest ever corporate merger at the time
Release of PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube consoles
Nine die in a crush at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, during Pearl Jam's set
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Gladiator
Billy Elliot
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
American Psycho
Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP
Coldplay, Parachutes
Radiohead, Kid A
OutKast, Stankonia
Life Lessons
Youthful idealism eh?
“May you live in modern times…”
Score
9
On balance I really enjoyed this. Immersive and atmospheric and extremely thought-provoking.
I gave Atwood’s 2000 Booker winner The Blind Assassin (a somewhat stingy in retrospect) 8/10.
Ranking to date:
When I Lived in Modern Times - Linda Grant (2000) - 9
Larry’s Party (1998) - Carol Shields - 8.5
A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999) - Suzanne Berne - 8.5
A Spell of Winter (1996) - Helen Dunmore - 8
Fugitive Pieces (1997) - Anne Michaels - 6.5
Next up
Cracking on with the Women’s Prize winners, in the shape of Kate Grenville’s 2001 winner, The Idea of Perfection.
