Reading Margaret Thatcher: Two Novels on Her Era

The Iron Lady has died at 87, after, it would seem, a long illness punctuated by strokes and other calamities that destroyed her intellect and personality.  What she meant to British life has been the topic of the Chattering Classes today.  Depending on what news feed you're reading/watching she was great or dreadful.

I've never followed politics in the UK as closely as I have the North American game, but two novels came to mind today as appreciations of her and her era.

The first is Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.  Published in  2006, it is a somewhat autobiographical story of an adolescent boy caught up in his own growing pains but also swept along by jingoism during the Falklands War of 1983. His naive patriotism is a proxy for a lot of criticism of the Thatcherite dismanteling of Post War Britain.

The second is Bridget Jones's Diary, published in 1996, shortly after Tony Blair and New Labour were swept into power in a wave of anti-Thatcherism. Helen Fieldiing's immensely successful first-person account of what was happening then, told by a loveable but somewhat ditzy 30-something young woman, gives a brisk, funny look at what many in Britain were thinking then.   Bridget hated Mrs. Thatcher and loved Tony Blair, in large part because each represented part of the British persona that either she rejected or revelled in.

I'd read both again beginning tonight if I hadn't handed off my copies to friends whose names I didn't note down
.  Sharing books I like with people I think might appreciate them is a big pleasure, and, although I know I ought to keep track of who has what, I always forget.  It is as if doing so would negate the pleasure of being generous with something I've enjoyed.

Do you think Ms. Thatcher lent books?  Perhaps, but I'm sure that she kept a list, and checked to see that she got them back.