The Party by Elizabeth Day
Martin Gilmour is someone who had a pretty dismal childhood, brought up by a widowed mother, economically strapped, and a bit of a wuss. But good fortune intervened and he found himself at a prestigious public boarding school (private school in the U.S.) and adjacent to the firmament of one Ben Fitzmaurice.
Ben Fitzmaurice, is the personification of the British elite - confident, handsome, from a well off family and clearly destined for great things. For some reason that is not clear to begin with, Ben takes Martin under his wing and their friendship has lasted beyond college into adulthood. Wherever Ben was, Martin was sure to be close by, acquiring the moniker little shadow, or LS, coined by Ben’s wife Serena, in recognition of Martin’s continuous presence in their lives.
We first meet Martin in a police interview room. He is called in to discuss events that transpired at “The Party,” an over the top celebration of Ben’s 40th birthday in the lavish palatial country house acquired by Ben and wife Serena for a little getaway from London. The crème de la crème of the establishment is expected to gather, including, perhaps, the Prime Minister. Something happens that night and as the story unfolds we find out the truth about this friendship and the secrets that have been kept for decades. The night of the party tensions explode as people’s true feelings are revealed.
Author Elizabeth Day, a British journalist and novelist has written a witty, biting novel about the political establishment in Britain, and the repercussions for a friend who is establishment adjacent until even that proximity is deemed a detriment to a friend’s political future.
It’s a delicious novel about social climbing, political insularity, the power of “the establishment” and the extent to which Britain’s politics is still dominated by class divisions. Her experience as a political journalist serves her well and her portrait of this particular world is full of keen observations and is telegenic, in a good way. You can begin to cast the story in your head and anticipate its transformation into a four-part British drama.
The Party describes the transactional nature of those involved in politics, how it transforms even the most well-meaning people as they ascend the heights of political stardom. The Prime Minister is remembered as someone different “I had met him twice at Ben’s dinner parties, long before he became smooth and polished and airbrushed, one of those public men incapable of shaking a hand without clasping it.”
Would be politician Ben is recalled by his old friend Martin this way “As a teenager, he had been touchingly sincere. These days, he saw sincerity as a valuable asset and it wasn’t quite the same thing.”
Ben’s moneyed and privileged background, attracts like people. Martin’s wife Lucy’s observations of Ben’s circle at a dinner party “One half of the table was arguing with the other half about the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, in that semi-detached, earnest way that moneyed people do, always safe in the knowledge no political outcome will really affect them.”
Day’s novel alternates between the narrations of Martin, and his long-suffering wife Lucy, as they recount the backstory of their relationship, Martin’s friendship with Ben, and what actually happened that led to “the event” at the Party. Lucy’s are from a notebook that she has started to keep after “the event” in order to understand everything in the run up to the party. It is a great device to keep us hooked, not only are we learning about this marriage and friendship, we are sticking with it because we are tantalized by the build-up to the night in question.
The alternating chapters from the vantage points of Martin and Lucy race along with a page-turning quality but it’s not a page-turner in the mass market sense. Day is a fluid writer with a knack for astute analysis and some psychological interpretation of this world that rings true. Her writing is both entertaining and somewhat seductive.
The book is about the friendship between Ben and Martin, as seen through the eyes of Martin, yes, but the more revealing insights are delivered by Lucy. Lucy is a somewhat quiet, unassuming woman who ends up married to Martin after an unlikely office romance, Martin an art writer and Lucy a smart researcher at a publication where Martin had toiled, never quite reaching the heights that his adjacency to Ben in life might have promised. Martin may have been the little shadow in Ben’s life, but Ben is clearly the big shadow in Martin and Lucy’s marriage.
“It’s hard now, viewed through the lens of everything that has happened, to remember that there were moments of happiness. It’s hard not to feel resentful towards Ben and to blame Martin for allowing their friendship to assume such vital importance to his entire existence. It’s hard not to think that I was competing in a battle I’d never signed up to, a battle everyone else knew I could never win but which I fought and fought and fought, attempting to persuade them they were all wrong.”
Lucy’s take on the friendship with the Fitzmaurice’s is one of the real delights of the book, she sees them in a clear-eyed way that Martin is incapable of grasping.
This is a book that genre fetishists would describe as a literary thriller, which means the writing is of high quality but the pacing is brisk. That’s one way to describe it I suppose. It’s also a book about relationships (of all kinds), the anxiety of being accepted, the pressures of class and status, the delusion that friendship can sometimes become, jealousy and retribution. It’s not a book about lying as much as it is a book about living a lie. Ultimately all the characters are living one and Day unspools that realization one tantalizing chapter at a time.
BEFORE YOU READ:
Length: 292 pages
Genre: literary fiction
Themes: friendship, politics, betrayal, marriage
Commitment: page-turner (in a good way!)
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