Hard Choices: 2nd Edition

by Carole Hayman

Shortlisted for the Saga Award for Wit
A darkly satirical vision of a society in which a political party conspires to stay in power at all costs .
Grace Fry, bold and beautiful Minister for Women, discovers a plot to suppress the truth by means of spin, murder and manipulation. With her own life in danger, will she dare to speak out or be seduced by the promise of a post at the top table?

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Carole Hayman is an English writer, broadcaster and journalist was born in Kent, and attended Leeds University and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.She has published numerous comic and satirical novels, and written radio and TV plays for the BBC.

Reviews

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't get me wrong, this is a good book. It has a strong plot, has an out-going main character whom everyone - particularly those who've been on the raw edge of office politics - will empathise closely with and prose that most of the time feels smooth and efficient, like skin after a leg wax. But, although it takes some shrewd pot-shots at the Labour Party nanny-state of the 'noughties' and the aftermath it's left behind in Britain (including the grubby Blairite spin-machine), I'm not sure it really says anything that hasn't been said already but in more stark form in Animal Farm and 1984. Which, I suppose, just goes to show how frighteningly enduring the themes in those books really are. And because of that I've given it three stars.

The book is set in a fictitious future, in the year 0010. Where Britain is a democracy only in name. And I can't help thinking that it would have been more interesting i.e. it would have given the author more scope to break new ground, if the book had plotted how the country had got there rather than starting with an absolutist government already in power and charting its paranoid actions to maintain control. As a result I generally knew what was going to happen before it did, and this did slow the pace. A few grammatical errors had also slipped through the edit process.

However, what it lacks in new fodder for thought and plot surprises it does make up for in a profound grasp of human self-interest, vanity and insecurity, the conflict they spawn and just how easily manipulable they make us. The book pinned human vulnerability neatly open on a platter like a dissected rat, accompanied by incisive moments of laugh out loud humour. It also ends on a good knife-edge. And because of that I enjoyed it. It's not a must-read, but it is a good one.

[Boomerang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Political satire about Grace Fry, minister, who uncovers shady dealings and plot to dumb down the nation by tampering with what we eat. Wickedly funny, definitely one for these credit-crunch post-boom times.