Un homme et une femme
More and more this election campaign resembles a piece of nineteenth century fiction. The two principal characters are a man and a woman: the man seems utterly sure of himself and appears to dominate, though this facade is undermined by suggestions of instability. The woman is more attractive, seeming to care for the human being hidden inside all of us, but from time to time she makes one of those inevitable gaffs to which women, we are told, are prone when they confront the “real world” e.g. how many nuclear submarines have we got? As in every good plot, there is another man, lurking just behind them, clean-living and Christian, rising and falling in our opinion: do we want him to triumph or is he really just a wet please-all? Is that rumour of a mistress going to take hold? Just as we think the author has put all his cards on the table, an elderly wicked uncle, rumoured to have died long ago, emerges to threaten all three characters. At first glance his ideas are outrageous but perhaps, after all, many readers are starting to see the sense behind them? Running thoughout the story in the background there is a large cast of minor characters, none of whom are very important, but they add colour and moments of drama (one rambunctious chap is threatened with gaol for wilfully destroying fields of genetically modified crops). Cleverly conceived, together they represent the full spectrum of human activity while never really impinging on the plot. You know you don’t have to remember who’s who because they will make no difference to the pitiful tale of a man and a woman at the forefront of the narrative. And with every day that passes, the end draws nearer, the outcome less certain