TOSS OF A COIN DECIDES LIFE’S COURSE
HEADS YOU WIN JEFFREY ARCHER MacMillan Review: Alan Peter Simmonds
JEFFREY Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, once a British MP, has had a controversial life. He turned to novel writing in 1974 after a financial trial. Now, almost 350 million sales later…
Made a life peer in 1992 after having won a cause celebre libel case in 1987, he subsequently became a Conservative candidate, but was elected Lord Mayor of London. He was forced to resign in 1999 for lying in his libel case and spent three years in jail for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
That should be enough for a novel on its own, don’t you think?
Now the author of 20-odd novels (some in collaboration) and a collection of short stories, he’s produced what will likely be another blockbuster in Heads
You Win in which fate hinges on the toss of a coin – not an original idea. It is Archer’s first lone authorship in 10 years.
British actress Joanna Lumley, herself a dabbler in the outlandish and the occult, says of the work: “The master storyteller returns with a nail-biter every bit as good as Kane
and Abel – utterly enthralling.”
I am not certain all readers of this latest work will agree.
One vital part to being critical, particularly of anything artistic, is to decide if the author has achieved his work’s objective, then to determine if it was worth it, whether that objective has been reached.
I found this work, while clever and exciting in parts, even though it follows a well-worked Archer path, not totally convincing. Nevertheless, Archer devotees will throw their hands in the air in horror at such a suggestion and rush to defend their “soapy” author.
As usual Archer’s plot is clever and almost a parody of his famous Kane and Abel and its doppelganger First
Among Equals, only this time it echoes Peter Howitt’s Sliding Doors.
Archer adroitly traces the progress of a Russian, Sasha, who ends up in London, goes up to Cambridge University and stands as a Labour MP – Archer drawing from his time at Oxford University and as a Tory politician – and a Russian friend, Alex, whose choice of their coin flip sees him end in New York where he becomes a hustler/businessman and becomes involved in all manner of depredations – ironically, the other well-documented side of Archer’s life.
Predictably, 30 years down the line, the duo eventually return to the Motherland, where they find in life after Communism a new lifestyle. In spite of it all, the denouement is satisfactory and Archer’s plot creativity to be commended.
Archer relates his inspiration for the work is vested in the life of former US Secretary of State General Colin Powell, whose Jamaican mother had to choose between settling in the US or UK.
Forever the outspoken philosopher, Archer speaks on life and relates it to his own life and work with this classic morsel:
“If you have energy and no talent you are still a prince; but if you have talent and no energy, you will be a pauper.”
You decide.