Book review

Various Pets Alive and Dead

Derek Macmillan reviews: Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marina Lewycka.

ISBN: 9781905490912

Various Pets Alive and Dead, by Marina Lewycka, published by Fig Tree

Various Pets Alive and Dead, by Marina Lewycka, published by Fig Tree   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

This book, by the author of “Two Caravans”, tells two parallel stories about a 1970s hippy commune and the adventures of two of its children in the 21st century. Much of the humour comes from ridiculing some of the more ultra-left views current in the 1970s, then contrasting the morality of the parents with the immoral world in which Serge – one of the children – has become embroiled.

I don’t intend to ruin the plot but the banking world is summarised for Serge thus: “Imagine gambling in a casino. Everything you win, you keep. And every time you lose, a kind-hearted donkey called Joe Public comes along with a sack of gold and pays off your debts … He just has to keep the government onside by keeping them running scared.”

Drawn into this world because of the easy money, Serge develops a whole new meaning for the term “fictitious capital.” The parts of the financial plot which seem most bizarre, like making money out of a downturn, are the parts which are most accurate.

In the hippy commune, the attempts to explain the role of marriage – or the “pastry arky of the domestos fear” – to young children are a salutary warning about fitting your language to your audience.

Marina Lewycka does not spare anybody, left or right, from her comic ridicule. This is a thoroughly good read.