A political fable told by the ruler’s servants
In Blood Kin, never has the second-wave feminist maxim seemed so true: The personal is political
By Donna Blumenfeld
Published: March 31st, 2008 | 2:15pm
begins with the overthrow of the President of an unnamed country and the capture of his closest staff. His portraitist, chef and barber are taken to share a comfortable imprisonment with the President in his Summer Residence. They are anonymous, nameless men reacting to events outside their control, and could be in almost any contemporary nation with a history of tyranny and rebellion.
These three nameless men — and the women entwined with them — narrate, in turn, a contemporary political fable about power. All the characters are in close proximity to the President. The men continue to groom, feed, and soothe the leader by virtue of their professions. In Dovey’s imaginary nation, as in the real world, the luxuries these men provide simultaneously reinforce and signal power. It doesn’t take long for the former rebels, now the nation’s leaders, to take advantage of their services.
The story is somewhat reminiscent of the works of Solzhenitsyn or Nabokov; power itself is a character, an impersonal force that infuses human interactions with extra moral impact. And yet Dovey’s exploration is unique. Her characters unfold into complex individuals with perpetually shifting relationships and full histories. Never has the second-wave feminist maxim seemed so true: the personal is political. As the novel develops, every character is entangled in a web of deception, immorality, self-interest, corruption and general ugly behavior. But this is politics, business as usual. Despite the machinations and unbelievable cruelty of both the old President and the new rebel Commander, the actual subjects want only for life to go on.
Dovey has hit on some painful truths here. It is profoundly uncomfortable to be reminded that one is politically passive; that, indeed, one has not voted or read a newspaper in quite some time. It’s even more uncomfortable to be faced with the realization that political activity often fails to change much for most of us. Is Dovey’s novel simply cynical, or is she showing us an unalterable human trait? Must power equal absolute mastery over the bodies and wills of other people? In the end, Blood Kin suitably refrains from delivering any easy resolutions.
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ABOUT THE BOOKBlood Kin
(Viking Adult)
by Ceridwen Dovey
$23.95
192 pages
Issue #35
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