Sam Leith
The Angry Brigade
The dedication to Hari Kunzru's third novel is cryptic. It says: ‘To all at 34.’ Is Kunzru (who I guess is that age or thereabouts) offering fraternal solidarity to his contemporaries? Is he alluding to a smart bar with a numerical name? To the inhabitants of a shared house in which he once lived? Or, perhaps, to the code number for a cell of revolutionary terrorists? My Revolutions is just the sort of book to make you wonder.
Michael Frame, whom we meet as preparations are underway for his 50th birthday party, is living a life of bourgeois ease. His partner Miranda is a successful entrepreneur with a range of hippyish Body Shop-type potions called, with horrible plausibility, ‘Bountessence’. He marinates in candid affection for his grown-up stepdaughter.
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