2020 -Discussion Thread Q1 - After The Party

I have very mixed feelings about this one, but thank you Mrs Mac for the choice and the introduction to a part of British history that I wasn’t familiar with at all before! It actually didn’t occur to me to think about what might have transpired in the years separating the two world wars, where I expect there were widespread feelings of fear that the country would go into a second war (particularly by the people who served in the first, or the families that lost loved ones in the first), but at the same time looking at the advancing enemy and being mentally prepared that history about to repeat itself.

I was utterly misled by what it says on the blurb, and only quite far into the book did I realise that the title is “After the Party” where the author is referring to Party and not party (I originally thought the capitalising of the P was simply because this is the title of a book!), and was wondering when she would cut to the chase and tell us all about this party that seemingly gets the story started. Only once I realised that the Party had been there all along did things start to make sense, and this happened far too late for me. I think I would enjoy this a little more were I to re-read it, as I would be in the right contextual frame of mind from the start, but I didn’t like it enough to do so and I think I’d rather tackle that TBR of books I’ve never read.

I did like how the author was trying to portray the notion that when parties like these fascist ones come into play and expand their influence throughout a country like this, more often than not it is brainwashed members of the public who do not necessarily fully understand what they are subscribing to, that spread the influence through recruitment of their family and friends. The use of camps such as the ones organised by Nina and Eric I believe are the ways in which ideologies spread, under the cover of more innocent pretexts. Subsequent research after finishing this book tells me that the Party had been outlawed in the country prior to the events of the story (I might have felt a bit less sympathetic had I know this before reading), but even from an outsider point of view Nina was my favourite character in the book so I saw it as no surprise that her sister was easily won-over by her.

I’m not sure I fully related to the recounting version of Phyllis (on that note – what was the significance of the year 1979?), her insistence that she is able to forgive Nina for selling her and Hugh out but not Patricia for what she refers to as “stealing my child”. It seemed obvious to me that Edwin had already been lost to her by that stage, and even in his adult years he preferred the company of his cousin over his sisters implying that he did genuinely enjoy being with Patricia and her family in his youth. I thought the arrangement proposed by Patricia and Greville would have been in Edwin’s best interests – he would be able to continue at the school that he presumably liked, and would be able to continue with the activities he enjoyed with Greville. They are relatives too, and it’s not like Phyllis would have completely lost the ability to see or interact with her son: The arrangement was that he would spend half his holidays with her, he is away at school most of the time anyway, and my guess is even without being “adopted” he would have on his own accord gone over to Patricia’s anyway. Her willingness to forgive Nina is quite mysterious to me, as it was her selling out Patricia and Hugh that got them into this mess to begin with!

The fact that I haven’t said much about the party and what subsequently happened to Sarita probably reflects the fact that looking back at the story as a whole it didn’t seem very significant to me, that it almost gets brushed as an aside by the time Phyllis and Hugh are arrested. Very close to the end the 1979 version of Phyllis talks about how it changed her life and that she felt almost as though she went to prison as redemption for what she did to Sarita rather than her Party activities, but I felt there was little to reflect this in the actual narrative. She goes to great lengths to make it clear that it was Fergus that was making moves on her during the dance, that she had no intentions beyond dancing, so why would it affect her so profoundly? Would she have been equally affected had Sarita not died that night i.e. is she regretting her thoughts/actions at the time or simply the consequence? I also didn’t quite feel the closeness described in the 1979 narratives, it felt as though Phyllis wanted to be close to Sarita but didn’t know how and as such their friendship wasn’t really as deep as she’d like – therefore Sarita’s death was more a regret on what could have been rather than a true cherished friend.

I completely agree with this! "It actually took me awhile to work out what was going on - I was that disoriented with the setting. Granted, I am really unfamiliar with this period of history so probably difficult to relate to begin with."