Veronica

by David Caute

British author Caute (News from Nowhere) steeps his stunning novel of sexual politics in literary allusions. The title echoes Victorian statesman/novelist Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil: Or the Two Nations (which describes the working class pitted against aristocrats) and later applies to a scandal-monger's expose of Caute's protagonist. Michael Parsons falls "instantly in love'' with his South African cousin Veronica when she comes to London in 1939 to live with his family. By the time his parents die in WW II, he knows that V is his half-sister. He justifies his passion via entries in his journal that record historical incidents of sibling incest and its endurance as a classic theme, copiously citing the Jacobean tragedy 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore and Ibsen's Ghosts. Determined to destroy his rival, V's American soldier fiance, Mike stoops to deceit and trickery. When V is hurt in a bomb raid and becomes dependent on barbiturates, her inhibitions abate and her mind deteriorates. Mike tenderly cares for her as their love flowers. Years later, Mike, now a Tory cabinet minister under Thatcher, is hounded by journalist Bert Frame, a slum-born bully--the two again personifying the "two nations" of Britain's social classes.

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Caute’s seventh novel is blackly humorous incest narrative, featuring loathsome Tory MP protagonist Michael Parsons, a conniving snob whose teenage penchant for his half-sister Veronica has vicious personal and political repercussions. Running alongside this wartime tale is tabloid reporter Bert Frame’s attempts to expose Parsons, a lifelong nemesis, in the 1980s present, for crimes suffered in the poorhouse as an urchin. The novel serves up another caustic depiction of minor public boarding school life (as seen in a trillion other English novels), and explores the diseased roots of the class-driven political system with cutting wit. The incest narrative, in particular Veronica’s motives, is not wholly convicing, and the outcome of that strand is not a triumph. Caute is always an erudite entertainer and never averse to confronting controversial topics with style and venom.