Disbanded Kingdom

I wasn’t sure when I requested this book if it would be my style - I mostly requested it because the author works for the same company as me - but the first page had me hooked (and not only because my town is mentioned there!) This book is a perfect portrait of a Britain divided - so timely, so crucial - but also a perfect portrait of that period in your early twenties when you feel adrift and directionless. A really thoughtful work.

I enoyed this novel.

The author's writing style is very descriptive, in the sense that you can definitely tell that he works in the theatre, at times the scene is given in a manner akin to stage direction, but I liked this sense of detailed scene setting and the way his descriptions fit with the mental state of the main character, Oscar, and the somewhat drifting, disjointed sense given of a specific place and time.

Oscar is 22. He is a curious mixture, at once privileged - white, male, well educated and financially secure - while also at sea, depressed, unemployed, directionless and suffering from feelings of abandonment and unease - adopted, unsure about his place in both family and society, gay yet feeling ill fitted to the gay culture of the city and also like a square peg in a round hole around both his own friends and his adoptive mother's friends. He is sinking into a dark, dissociative mental state, pulling away from those closest to him, mourning the end of his first relationship and the boy who left him to go to Tokyo (couldn't distance himself much more than that), wondering more and more about the identity of his birth mother, the circumstances of her life which led to her abandoning him as she did, growing apart from his formerly close relationship with the woman who adopted him, finding himself opposing the political stance of family and friends, questioning his own privilege (by fortune of adoption), feeling completely lost in the circles he finds himself in and without a clue what to do with his adult life.

Oscar temporarily finds both anchor and obsession in the form of Tim, a man who is seeing his adoptive mother. Tim is from the Midlands, also not a natural fit with the privileged moneyed set, politically rather more socialist and liberal than most of the others he finds around him. Along with his glimpses of other cultures and lives in different parts of London, his obsession with Tim, while not healthy by any means, helps Oscar to further consider his own sense of seperateness and difference, to consider the pros and cons of making a break into independence and self-sufficiency.

Oscar's story is also set against a background/setting/discussion of and comparison to contemporary political and social themes - class, money/economics, employment, immigration, Scottish independence and Brexit. We see London as the home of many, varied people and cultures that it is - but we also see the segregation within the city into different areas and communities....and also different attitudes and biases.

This novel could be classed as 'gay lit', however, although Oscar is gay and we see both different aspects of gay culture in London and differing attitudes/levels of acceptance of his sexuality, this isn't the focus of the narrative, instead shown as another layer of variety, difference, diversity and potential division within London and Britain as a whole (along with class/money, ethnicity, religion, political stance etc.)

Overall....nicely done, thought provoking (on various levels) and worth reading.

Disbanded Kingdom is a novel about growing up, modern day London, and infatuation. Oscar is twenty-two and lives in Kensington with his foster mother, novelist Charlotte Fontaine. He is privileged and lost, still adrift after the breakup with his only boyfriend, feeling like he doesn't belong anywhere and not connected to the political and social views of his friends or Charlotte's friends. When he meets thirtysomething Tim at Charlotte's book launch, he doesn't realise he's about to become completely infatuated with him, or that it will be more complicated than an awkward crush.

The novel is at once the story of someone young and sad trying to grow up, and the story of a city caught at a weird time, a multicultural city full of left and right as the country tries to leave the EU. The motif of breaking away is one that is found throughout the novel, making Brexit part of the coming-of-age-ness in some ways, and a counterpoint to it in others. The London depicted is modern and hipster, if occasionally a little too emphatically so, and the novel depicts privileged white people in the city, purposefully pointing out their ignorance at times. The contrast between the realness of Brexit as shown in the novel (a feature likely to make it date noticeably) and the unrealness of the privilege at times (characters just being given two thousand pounds a month isn't exactly relatable) is an interesting one, and the novel often feels a little unreal and hazy, perhaps due to Oscar's lack of direction.

Disbanded Kingdom is a good read, caught between light and heavy in a way that coming of age type novels often are, with affected youth and dissatisfaction.

Matthew Janney, The Culture Trip’s UK Books Editor, wrote a timely piece earlier this year on the subject of Brexit literature, in which he described it as a new genre “reminiscent of classical 20th-century dystopian fiction”, but one that aimed to “narrativize the turbulent fallout of the [United Kingdom’s] 2016 referendum.” He saw this “volatile source of material” as an unending wellspring of inspiration, and suggested with conviction: “This is a space that fiction can own.”

Certainly the referendum on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union has been hugely divisive, with families and friends falling out over the pros and cons of leaving. There does also appear to be a new “era-defining” fiction emerging from the chaos. In his article, Janney quotes briefly from Ali Smith’s Autumn, a book described by The Guardian as being the “first post-Brexit novel”. These few sentences bear repeating:

“All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they’d really lost. All across the country, people felt they’d really won. All across the country, people felt they’d done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing…“

Disbanded Kingdom is a dispiriting coming-of-age story set against the emotive backdrop of the UK’s breakaway from the EU and its prospective split with Scotland. Oscar, its 22-year-old protagonist is an introspective man-child living in upscale Kensington with his doting foster mother Charlotte Fontaine, a highly successful writer of cheesy romance novels. He is the definitive ‘poor little rich kid’, qualified for nothing – there’s little incentive to work when one’s bank balance is regularly and unquestioningly replenished. Between meeting female friends in fashionable cafes and getting drunk at all-nighters, his days are spent roaming the streets of London and riding to nowhere in particular on the Tube.

Oscar does at least have some redeeming qualities: he’s bright, kind-hearted and inquisitive. After breaking up with his boyfriend and sinking into a melancholic lethargy, he starts questioning his place in the world. He is at his lowest ebb when he first meets (and is instantly attracted to) Tim, Charlotte’s thirty-something literary agent, a witty, politicized northerner with whom he shares a sense of the absurd. Although he often struggles to understand the older man’s views on class and his rejection of religion, their friendship changes his perceptions of life and galvanizes him into rethinking his future.

The characters are able to express their polarized views on issues such as Brexit, immigration and Scottish devolution in set pieces – generally as they sit around a dinner table. Heated discussion is followed by awkward silence; a situation maddeningly familiar to most of us these days. Not since the English Civil War have we been so at odds with each other, and the author perfectly captures the all too real tensions between narrow conservatism and open-minded liberalism in an informal environment.

Disbanded Kingdom has arrived at the height of Brexit anxiety in the UK and is depressingly ‘on the button’. However, after finishing the novel I was left with slight hope the younger generations may have the gumption and good sense to move on from this monumental muddle of our own making.

Polis Loizou was born and raised in Cyprus, but now lives in South London. He is a co-founder of London’s Off-Off-Off Broadway Company, which primarily performs his plays, and has enjoyed a series of successes since its first hit at the Buxton Fringe in 2009. His work has been featured in The Stockholm Review of Literature, Liars’ League NYC and Litro Magazine. Disbanded Kingdom is his first published novel.

The writing was reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis, namely his novel The Rules of Attraction. There are many parallels in Disbanded Kingdom to The Rules of Attraction: a rag-tag, privileged group of young people looking for a purpose in life, unrequited romantic feelings, reappearance of an ex-lover.

I had some difficulty with the writing style--painfully introspective and patronizing at times--and it took me about a third of the book to really get into the story. Different ethnicities and cultures are heavily mentioned throughout-- some not so flattering. Politics is also a major talking point.

The story is told from Oscar's perspective. He's very obviously depressed and that comes through every page. I wanted him to find happiness or, at the very least, get to a better place. He has many luxuries and conveniences at his disposal, but doesn't think he is worthy of those privileges.

I'd be interested in reading a sequel to get further insight to Oscar's further discovery of himself.