After the Party

"Such a good topic for a novel. Cressida Connolly’s book illuminates a sliver of history which, in the post-war rush of disassociation with even the briefest flirtation with fascism , is still uncomfortable, isn’t it? Aristocratic flirtation was marvellously addressed by Kazuo Ishiguro in The Remains of the Day , and After the Party offers a less socially elevated but perhaps more insidious slant. Phyllis Forrester isn’t so much heroine as dupe, or so the contemporary reader, her children safe from military call-up, smugly feels. Yet can you, hand on heart and forgoing hindsight, say that you’d have completely resisted the snare of the charismatic leader preaching war avoidance? Connolly doesn’t overdo the discomfort. She’s too clever for that. Instead, she winds the hopes and fears of 1938 into a tale of sisters, the undercurrents of their relationships mirroring the early rumblings of the war. Why was After the Party on the shortlist? Because—apart from filling all the Walter Scott Prize criteria—Cressida Connolly’s writing is gently remorseless, gently relentless. She never cops out. With courage and skill, she sees her story through to its bitter end and, as happens with the best historical fiction, leaves the reader asking ‘what if’."