The Unholy Trinity
Reviewed by Donovan’s Literary Services, Donovan, Sr, Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
The Dove is Dead tackles a late-in-life crisis experienced by two men, Bob Swarbrick and Richard Shackleton, who are in their seventies and on the cusp of the greatest change in their lives. These contrast with the reflections of younger Amy, who also is on the cusp of very different realizations.
Readers who choose this concluding book in The Unholy Trinity, which presents the social history of the working and lower middle class in Britain, might think themselves at a disadvantage for not reading the book’s predecessors. But one of the pleasures in this title is that one can enter it without prior knowledge and still receive a rich foray into the lives and shifting perspectives of three generations of a close family.
The story opens from the perspective of a college girl Amy Shackleton: “You can be woke and still be sensible,” I’d say. “It’s all about being alive to the wrongs of the past, which isn’t everything in history.” And then I’d add as a joke, “But that includes everything that’s happened in the West since the industrial revolution started.” No, nobody ever laughed. I’ve never wanted to rebel against my upbringing in a big way though. It had been good. More than anything, I’d hate to be seen as a poor little rich girl, when I know that what I should feel is both privileged and grateful.”
This contemporary observation dovetails nicely with the prior novels, presenting a recap that easily educates newcomers with a quick outline of characters and history. It opens the story of an family that experiences turbulence, love, and changing social conditions that test their values and perspectives.
As scenes evolve in movie-like staccato play, readers receive thought-provoking insights into family relationships and ideals that teeter on the cusp of social and psychological evolution: “…this was the time of the Black Lives Matter campaign, which I strongly felt that the whole of Britain should take to heart. It was one of the things I disagreed with Dad on, who saw it as just one initiative among many that had taken place during his life.”
Although British politics are part of the discussions that evolve between adults and the next generation, there is no requirement that readers be familiar with or understand the nuances or history of any of these events. The smooth reflections incorporate these facets as needed to create a thoroughly engaging, understandable milieu.
Readers who enjoy stories of generational attitudes, social change, and how relationships are tested and shift under the quicksand of political and social struggle will particularly appreciate John Uttley’s attention to creating dialogues that clarify and change hearts and minds: “In the outside world, there was a terrible murder of a young woman walking home in London. I was so angry about it, telling Dad that all men were rapists at heart. I was surprised that he didn’t totally disagree. “I don’t think you can ever change all men for good, however much you educate them. We try to make it better, but the devil will always be in the mix.” That wasn’t an acceptable answer to me.”
Through solidly-constructed, believable protagonists are tempered by the first-person opinions and observations of Amy, readers gain insights into both the later years of thinking processes that are tempered by time and experience and the ideals and illusions of youth.
As faith, community, life, and death touch Amy’s world, readers are drawn to the interactions between individuals who embrace different facets of change in disparate manners, growing to appreciate their loved ones all the more for the impermanence of life itself: “I looked at Mum and Dad and realised how much they meant to me. They wouldn’t be with me forever.”
The result may be a fitting end for prior readers of The Unholy Trinity, but will prove an exceptional beginning for new readers dropped into this pursuit of meaning and purpose from life, politics, relationships, and growing older.
Libraries interested in fiction that embraces a powerful sense of place, faith, and family will find The Dove is Dead a thought-provoking contrast between generations as British society shifts. Its insights about truth, identity, hope, and family legacy will linger in the mind long after the story’s conclusion.
Where’s Sailor Jack?
STAR REVIEW:
Review by Ray Connolly, Journalist, Playwright, Novelist and the foremost commentator on the sixties.
Nothing changed the social complexion of Britain quite as effectively as the 1944 Education Act. At a stroke of government, bright working class children were given a chance for further education that their parents could only have dreamed about.
Bob and Richard were two of those children. Grammar school boys from Lancashire, and friends throughout everything since, their education and abilities have led them up the success ladder in business and industry. Now in their sixties, they should, you might think, be enjoying the fruits of their life’s work. Well off, by most people’s standards, in some ways they are. But life isn’t ever plain sailing. As always, sex, love, pride, ambition and, not least, the past, ally to complicate things.
And in this thoroughly enjoyable first novel by John Uttley, himself a Lancashire grammar school boy of that period, we dive into the complexities of two families, each with its own problems as the clock on Bob’s and Richard’s mortality continues to tick. It could be the story of many of us of that so luckily blessed generation.
EDITORIAL REVIEW:
‘A High Fidelity for the original baby boomers’
I worked with John Uttley as a developmental editor on this novel, but please don’t think me partisan. Anyone who has read my work as a literary critic will know that I’m a straight shooter when it comes to good and bad writing. Where’s Sailor Jack? is a pleasure to read, and a great debut from a meticulous writer. I love this book simply as a reader, and I’m very happy to see it in print.
Where’s Sailor Jack? is by turns romantic, poignant, and extremely funny, exactly what I want from a family saga. Like its hero, Bob Swarbrick, this novel is charming, charismatic and complex, and reminds us that not all contemporary fiction has to mirror Hollywood, with metrosexual twenty-somethings charging about solving impossible problems. Where’s Sailor Jack? is measured and thoughtful, with a strong plot, believable characters, and an intelligent moral centre. I’m wary of labelling, and ‘boomer lit’ is a bit of a catchall these days, but if like me you won’t see fifty again then you will really relate to this novel. Uttley cannily keeps three generations in play, but his core characters are nearer the end than the beginning and thus look back as much as they look forward, still trying to figure it all out. One of the many questions the story asks (and answers) is will there be too much baggage when Bob’s ship comes in?
Bob is an engineer. He’s a working class Northerner made good, and his origins place him always slightly outside the professional class to which he now belongs. He was inspired by the cultural revolution of the late-fifties and early-sixties, and although he did well out of Thatcherism, his roots have left him with a rebellious scepticism in which corporate greed and leftwing intellectualism are held in roughly equal contempt. Since the failure of his first marriage he has been unable to sustain a serious personal relationship, and still carries a torch for his ex-wife, Jane (a feminist academic who steals every scene in which she appears). His best friend, Richard, is an investment banker with enough doubts about his profession to return a bonus. He now regrets his decision not to enter the church as a young man, although his wife is far from convinced that Christianity holds all the answers.
Now nearing retirement, Bob and Richard are working together for one last time on the flotation of a clean energy start-up company. Against this backdrop, Bob is offered two chances for love, one new, one old, while Richard’s apparently idyllic marriage is sorely tested. And all the while, in many different ways, major and minor characters search for some sort of meaning to their lives, from faith to politics to love, all of them in one way or another trying to answer the question the book’s title asks, ‘Where’s Sailor Jack?’ (Bob’s late father): Where do we go when we die?
There’s an honesty about the dilemmas and challenges these characters face, with a real insight into human relationships that brings an emotional depth unusual in modern mainstream fiction. What’s also unusual is that female characters are as strong and well realised as the men, while the philosophy of the narrative never gets in the way of a cracking story. The novel is never preachy, allowing different world views and inviting readers to decide their own answer to the book’s question. Either way, there is a fundamentally uplifting message, whether taken as Christian or simply Humanist and Existential.
John Uttley’s debut novel reminded me at once of reading Graham Greene on faith and Graham Swift on aging, with the sexual honesty of John Updike, the range of a John Irving family saga, and the quirky British humour of Nick Hornby – in fact, in many ways, Where’s Sailor Jack? is a High Fidelity for the original baby boomers. And the subplot about the flotation is a fascinating insight into investment banking by an author who knows that world very well. So forget about Christian Grey and find out how the real business millionaires live, with all the same doubts, fears, highs and lows as the rest of us. An utterly delightful book.