2008 alternate-history suspense/thriller, last in the "Small Change"
trilogy. In the fascist Britain of 1960, former Inspector Carmichael
still runs the Watch, the secret police charged with rounding up Jews,
Communists, and other undesirables; his adopted niece, Elvira, is
looking forward to her début.
The pattern of alternating viewpoints by chapter continues as in
Farthing and Ha'penny, but Elvira is unfortunately naïve and has
less agency than the prior female narrators; her narrative job is
primarily to show off the inevitable mechanism of Things Getting
Worse, as some of Carmichael's enemies make their move against him
through her, and he finds that his political capital isn't as solid as
he had hoped.
Where my feeling while reading the prior books was mostly hoping that
the worst wouldn't happen, I didn't get the same sense of hope offered
and then withdrawn here: it's more that the hope isn't even offered in
the first place. This makes it harder for the story to build up
momentum, as something unpleasant happens to Elvira and then
Carmichael tries to do something about it, but we're not at the end of
the book so we know it isn't going to work, at least not completely.
With that slow build of nastiness, a last-minute hopeful ending feels
like a false note: why that person, why in that way, and why not do
the same thing much earlier? Not to mention that it's all rather
rushed.
I was also struck by the general incompetence of many people here,
with fumbled interrogations, resistance groups that don't segment
their organisation anything like as well as they should, and generally
a failure to take things whole-heartedly enough to be effective.
The writing is still lovely, and this is a satisfying end to the
trilogy – for all that I'd like to read about what happened next. The
first book is still the best, but I'd say this comes a close second in
quality.
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