'Maggie Gee's book takes flight . . . her writing maintains a careful balance between realism and allegory, and the result is wrenching, not least because she dares to end the novel with the possibility of redemption.' New York Times· 'Courageous, honest,
Alfred White, keeper of London's Albion Park, protects its grounds as if they were the last vestiges of an ideal England. He shows the same stern devotion to his family, but when illness confines him to a hospital bed he is forced to acknowledge that he has failed them. His eldest son is emotionally crippled by his father's violent temper; his daughter, Shirley, has rejected him; and his younger boy, Dirk, is filled with inarticulate hatred. The White Family, a finalist for the 2002 Orange Prize, lays bare the roots of racism in contemporary Britain, but it is equally a novel about love and the ways love and anger can become tangled. Maggie Gee stumbles slightly with Dirk, but her book takes flight when it focuses on the conflicted loyalties of Alfred's wife, May, and on Shirley's determination to see her relationships with black men as more than an act of defiance. Gee's writing maintains a careful balance between realism and allegory, and the result is wrenching, not least because she dares to end the novel with the possibility of redemption: ''Close up, you see the two separate streams … the angry looks, the different skins. Move back a little, and you see the river. It has two banks, but all of it mourns.'' — Simon Leake
The gritty intimacies of everyday middle-class life in England flesh out a larger story of race and resentment in Maggie Gee's The White Family, shortlisted for Britain's Orange Prize. Alfred White has been park keeper at Albion Park for nearly 50 years when he collapses and is taken to the hospital. As his family gathers around him, their individual histories are revealed: son Darren is a very successful and rather superficial journalist; daughter Shirley, to her father's disgust, lives with a black man; son Dirk is a budding skinhead. Their mother, May, tries desperately to hold the family together, despite the odds. A violent attack shows how strong racial hatred can be, but also serves as an emotional release for some of the novel's tormented characters. Gee's graceful, nuanced family portrait is well framed by her take on racial tensions in late 20th-century England.
The eighth from Britisher Gee (Christopher and Alexandra, 1992, etc.) confronts race and family but feels like Styrofoam: it takes up lots of space, but most of it's air.
When the impossibly named Alfred White-caretaker at Albion Park, a place that comes to represent what's left of British orderliness-is hospitalized after an altercation with some blacks while on duty, the aftermath of his recovery is the perfect catalyst for an examination of racism, UK-style. And, oh, what a family to explore: youngest son Dirk is a live-at-home skinhead who used to torture mice when just a wee lad; daughter Shirley might marry a dapper black named Kojo (he calls her his pink, pale pearl; he's her "black, dark, beautiful black, a black with the sheen of coal or grapes"); wife May loves her husband and everyone else, but just can't understand all these politics going on around her; and other son Darren is off to America for legitimate opportunity. The family history is littered with violence-before being beaten in the park, Alfred did the hitting around here. After all, there was that time when Shirley got preggers and no one knew whether the child was "coloured." In any event, what's going to happen when attacks start to occur regularly in Albion park because Alfred's gone? He's the caretaker-so he'll have to go back, won't he? Most among an American readership will tire of the lengthy interior monologue that passes for characterization here-we're more pushed away than drawn in. And with characters so often either insipid bigots or righteous liberals, who'd want to be so close to their thoughts? Then again, the rawness may appeal to some, at least for the way it seems to record the continuing declineof the "dark" side of the British imperial legacy.
Stylistically, though, still on the far side of the pond.
