Maggie Gee has written 14 novels including The White Family, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize). Blood, her latest, is a bizarrely misfiring black comedy. The setting is Thanet, which was the only Ukip-held council in Britain until March last year, when almost half of its councillors resigned and formed a breakaway group. The choice of Thanet is not accidental, and one’s initial hope was that this might be the first great Brexit novel.
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James Delingpole
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Brexit is mentioned, but the narrative is dominated by 38-year-old ‘buxom bruiser’ Monica Ludd, an unconventional deputy head at a local secondary school, who we are repeatedly told is six foot. While being a tall woman doesn’t seem weird in itself, Monica, with her caterpillar eyebrows, is painted as something of a grotesque, who wonders whether she has Neanderthal genes and says: ‘Male eyes feast upon my breasts.’
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