The Book Tower

Gordon Burn wrote the much celebrated novel Alma Cogan. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, although deeply disturbing. He’s an extremely talented writer who’s always tempted to blend reality with his fiction. His latest, Born Yesterday, is an attempt to publish a novel featuring a backdrop of topical events. Covering England in 2007, the year of the summer floods, Gordon Brown succeeding Tony Blair and the disappearance of Madeleine Mcann, Burn has attempted to produce a work that lives and breathes a recognisable yet complex and uncertain climate. He succeeds.

Subtitled The News as a Novel, Born Yesterday may be uncomfortable for those expecting a work of fiction. It’s more a work of journalism, but some of the best topical writing I have ever read. Burn has a talent for recognising coincidences and parallels in events that only appear to share time and place in common. He follows several obsessions, primarily the Madeleine Mcann media frenzy and the fate of a handful of Britain’s Prime Ministers. Maggie Thatcher, old yet still stately, spotted walking in a London park with her minders. Tony Blair and his often comical relationship with George Bush, and most of all Gordon Brown – a man who although often labelled as dull proves an excellent candidate for analysis. He really is a fascinating, odd character and Burn writes superbly about him; this is critical of the man but it is also touching. I think Burn has a sneaking admiration for him, although I suspect he would be the first to deny it.

Gordon Burn subtly blends apparent coincidences into his writing where others would appear to be trying too hard to forge connections. He tracks down the soap star who sat in the same London restaurant where Blair and Brown supposedly made their famous deal. Their meeting doesn’t result in any insight into the Blair/Brown relationship, but it offers a wealth of insight with the fresh glimpses of life it reveals. He strips away apocryphal media tales, although managing to convince that things are often linked in the way that the press suggests – they only lack the talent or insight to report it with any justice. And they remain blinkered – Burn allows us to think a little and read around subjects.

Born Yesterday is a book about 2007, published in February 2008. It’s still resonant, although its importance may fade. Or shift – I think it will remain a valuable insight of Britain in this decade. Ditch your tabloids, your broadsheets even. This is the best, most thoughtful, reporting I’ve read of recent history.