Writing by numbers

I've been reading a proof copy of a wonderful debut novel, Addition by Toni Jordan, which Sceptre have produced to promote their mass-market paperback after doing poorly with the trade paperback, possibly owing in part to a fairly atrocious cover.

Our narrator is Grace, who has a variant of OCD which compels her to count everything in her life and restricts her to those things which she can easily monitor. She is not portrayed as weak, as any sort of victim or as being in any sort of denial. She resists categorisation, marginalisation and any sort of mollycoddling. She is forthright, independent and possessed of a irresistibly sharp wit.

But that doesn't mean she's not vulnerable. She just knows her weaknesses and doesn't need a knight in shining armour to save her from herself. She's a well drawn, rounded character, someone I felt I was getting to know, not just a figure to observe travelling through a particular story. She feels as if she should have life beyond the page.

Her own personal version of numerology means that the fact that her full name, Grace Lisa Vandenburg, has the same number of letters as Seamus Joseph O'Reilly - 19 - means he's definitely got boyfriend potential. So it was with some excitement I noticed that mine does too! Only then did I realise that I seem to have fallen in love with a fictional character. Still, at least she's from someone else's imagination rather than my own, which is encouraging.

Sobering statistic of the week - with the possible exception of the revelation by the Zoological Society of London that humanity has killed off between a quarter and a third of the world's animal life since 1970 - is the survey of Italians which found that 68% of them want all Roma Gypsies deported from the country.

Last month's national elections resulted in the return to power of the odious Silvio Berlusconi, heading a right-wing coalition voted in largely owing to their hardline proposals with regard to immigration. Italian police have been charged with protection the Roma from victimisation, but so far this seems to have little impact on the abuse and violence.

We can't be complacent in the UK. London now has Boris Johnson as its Mayor - even though voting for Boris was as about as sensible as voting for a bowl of fruit - which no doubt has at least something to do with Tory attitudes to immigration. The real concern is the fact that the Mayoral Assembly now has a BNP member, since 5% of voters were taken in by their paranoid xenophobia, although I am gratified to learn that, thus far, the ghastly Richard Barnbrook is being ignored by his fellow Assembly members.

He was the BNP member who offered his support to Prima Ballerina Simone Clarke when she attacked for using her Arts Council-funded prominence to speak in support of the BNP. At the time she was dating a dancer of Cuban-Chinese descent, which Barnbrook said he didn't have problem with, but added that he thought it best that the pair didn't have children.

The following statement made to the BBC during his campaign should leave you in no doubt about his commitment to tolerance:

"You can be gay behind closed doors, you can be heterosexual behind closed doors, but you don't bring it onto the streets, demanding more rights for it."

This worrying incompassion, which seems set only to increase alarmingly given the sentiments offered in response by readers of the Daily Mail on their website and on the BBC website's Have Your Say page, will no doubt become even more prevalent as the world's resources become stretched. This week Barcelona, with their reservoirs filled to only 18% of their capacity, became the first European city to import water. I wonder how long it will be before we have tales of immigrants scrounging water.

I've been reading an anthology of Peter Ustinov's weekly columns for the defunct European newspaper written in 1990-91 and his calm wisdom is something which seems no longer to have a place in political debate.

He speaks with the compassion one would expect of such an active ambassador for UNICEF and does not shy from uncomfortable truths. In a piece revealing the widespread victimisation of the Maori community in New Zealand, he notes:

"Prejudice is an indefinable weed which is at its most insidious in the greenest of lawns."

With the West's lawns starting to brown, I fear that our feeble attempts to protect the world's poor and weak will be replaced by the frantic raising of drawbridges.

Not a daily Mail reader

(Originally posted on 13th July 2007)

Today I finished The Road Home by Rose Tremain and I do think it's possible that I've just read this year's Man Booker Prize winner. It's the story of Lev, an eastern European immigrant to Britain: his wife has died and he has come to Britain to try to make enough money to improve the life of his daughter, who now lives with his mother. I'd not read a Rose Tremain before, but until now she's been best known as an historical... no, I don't care what Fowleresque edict I'm contravening, a historical novelist, and I'm rarely tempted by those. But she has an elegant, unfussy style which works its magic quite discreetly.

I've no doubt that Lev's story is not typical of the immigrant experience in Britain. He has the benefit of good fortune a little too often and his suffering at the hands of British prejudice is infrequent and relatively benign. But I'm not sure that's a valid objection. Rose Tremain is telling Lev's story and it is asking a little too much to ask him to represent everyone with a similar backstory. If Lev and the supporting cast were nothing more than stereotypes, it would be an issue. But Lev, his family and friends at home and his new acquaintances are well-rounded, the sort of characters one has no difficulty imagining outside the confines of this narrative.

Reading it reminded me of Ripley Bogle by Robert McLiam Wilson, a novel I loved when I read it about ten years ago. Ripley Bogle is homeless, but quite the street poet, with dandyish artistic sensibilities. But he is such a vibrant, vital creation that one soon sees how irrelevant any accusation that the author has romanticised life on the streets would be. And I met a man not unlike him at Crisis one Christmas: Brian was as well-read, knowledgeable and erudite as any Islington dinner party guest.

Earlier in the week, when I was only a short way into The Road Home, The Daily Mail took advantage of the conviction of the 21st July would-be bombers to emblazon their front page with a characteristically nasty headline: 'Bombers on benefits: How four refugees taking sanctuary in Britain betrayed us'. No doubt further stories about the dangers of the amoral foreigner invasion will follow and it will become even harder for anyone with the slightest tint to their skin - creosote-hued celebs not included - to step outside without being subjected to stares of hatred and suspicion.

Whenever I come across these examples of The Daily Mail's revolting agenda, I always think about an interview in The Guardian a few years ago with the Jennifer Griffin, daughter of Nick Griffin, the abominable leader of the abominable British National Party. She'd decided that she wanted to set up a BNP equivalent of the Young Conservatives (or Conservative Future as they rebranded themselves at a time when it seemed like the Tories had none, before Tony Blair contrived his legacy of making them look electable again). Challenged to defend her views on 'white flight' and Britain's being 'full-up' - clearly just a parroting of those of her father, who presumably spouted racist propaganda at her in lieu of bedtime stories - she said, "'The Daily Mail seems sure that illegal immigration is causing terrible problems across the country." You can read the article at http://politics.guardian.co.uk/elections2004/story/0,,1217914,00.html - it's bloody scary.

Having spent most of this post damning the Mail mentality, I must confess to, erm, buying The Mail on Sunday today: I couldn't resist the giveaway of Prince's new album. I was very curious to see what the lascivious composer of Sexy MF, Dirty Mind, Gett Off, etc. might possibly have to say to middle England.

Not, it would seem, a lot. He rocks out competently, warbles along to some jazzy lounge stuff and generally provides an excellent soundtrack to a cheesy evening of clumsy seduction. Meh, which I believe is the expression of indifference de nos jours.

The Mail on Sunday lived up to expectations though: every page made me shudder.