The Ghost

On Saturday, on the way to a wedding where there was a surplus of booze and a complete absence of soft drinks or water, I saw an advert for the Robert Harris novel The Ghost. And it said at the bottom of the ad "DESTROY AFTER READING". No doubt this was to provoke a mental image of the book as a highly controversial threat to national security, or something similar. However, having read the book, I can say I am half-tempted to destroy it. Not because I think it is a threat to national security or any similar guff, but rather because it wasn't very good.

The plot itself is partly the problem - whislt there are some exciting moments, the book as a whole is about a dislikable ghost writer writing a book about dislikable characters. The plot is almost entirely predictable. You know from the outset that someone is guilty and that the suicide was almost certainly a murder. You know it is all going to be about the War on Terror, and the unpleasant underbelly of that conflict. And most of the book is about someone writing up that story - so we are seeing the events second hand, through the jaundiced eyes of a ghost writer. And by the time I reached the final *twist*, I no longer cared about any of these characters and their silly little lives.

Part of this is probably because I have read, and very much enjoyed, other Robert Harris novels. So my expectations for this one were very, very high. And fundamentally, a book about a ghostwriter trying to hit a tight deadline lacks the raw excitement of an attempt to expose the Holocaust in an alternate history where the US is about to make peace with the Nazi empire. Or a book where there is an attempt to find Stalin's son by hardline communists who are determined to restore Stalinism to Russia. But there is another problem. On some levels, The Ghost seems to want to operate as a satire - a satire on Blair, on the War on Terror, on Nu Labour and the tragic death of Dr David Kelly. And in that attempt at satire, more than anything else, is where the novel fails for me.

The book is so lumpen with the references to famous people that Harris should have just dropped any pretence of this being fiction, and instead called Adam Lang "Tony Blair". The book as a whole felt like a pedestrian novelisation of The Trial of Tony Blair - without the humour, but with the same commitment to the leaden satire that would embarrass a student union revue.

Satire works better when it takes reality, and corrupts it enough to make it outrageous but still recognisable. And - crucially - the characters need to be distinct and stand up in their own right. Francis Urquhart works so well as a satirical character as he is recognisable as a ruthless politician, but also has a distinct and interesting personality as well. He is not any particular member of the then Tory government, but he does represent the darkest elements of that government, and magnifies them to create a character who is both nightmarish and compelling. Likewise, Alan B'stard is an outrageous satire - an unbelievable, amoral character who is somehow still likable and worth watching. He represents the very worst of eighties greed and malice, but is not anyone in particular. The Ghost fails in part because the Lang character is Tony Blair in all but name, and after enduring 10 years of Blair I know I am not alone in never wanting to hear about him again, and not giving the first crap about whether a character based on him lives or dies.

There is a great satire about the Blair years; it is called The Think of It. The Ghost tries, and fails, to better that.