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    My Revolutions
    My Revolutions
    My Revolutions
    Audiobook9 hours

    My Revolutions

    Written by Hari Kundzru

    Narrated by Simon Prebble

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    An award-winning novelist looks back at the sixties to answer the question quot;What turns a radical into a terrorist?quot; Chris Carver is living a lie. His wife, their teenage daughter, and everyone in their circle know him as Michael Frame, suburban dad. They have no clue that as a radical student in the sixties, he briefly became a terrorist, protesting the Vietnam War by setting bombs around London. Chris believes he has left his past behind-until he sees the ghost of a dead ex-lover. Shortly after, an old friend turns up on his doorstep, wanting to reminisce and hinting at blackmail. Chris must escape all over again. On the run, he remembers his days as an isolated, idealistic youth, hopelessly in love with Anna Addison, competing for her affections with Sean Ward, charismatic leader of the radical August 14th Group. Ideologies collided and lines blurred until the events of one horrifying night forced them apart forever. Now Chris wonders: Who was he? Who is he? What side was he on back then? Which side is he on today?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJan 24, 2008
    ISBN9781598875997
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    Reviews for My Revolutions

    3.5/5

    125 ratings11 reviews

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    • 1/5
      The summary sounded so much better than the book actually was.
    • 2/5
      I found myself skimming through the last half of this book to get to the end.I don't like Hippy revolutionary BS, so some dudes youth trying to become 'revolutionary' didn't really interest me too much. Not really the book for me.
    • 5/5
      A great book, highly recommended. Loosely based on the activities of the Angry Brigade in the late 60s and early 70s it is a superb and highly convincing account of how a small group of activists become more and more cut off from reality, more and more mutually dependent and mutually destructive and how sexual tension and sexual politics drive even more extreme action. It would be easy to deal in charicatures but Kunzru draws his characters with so much sympathy that you end up caring deeply about what are essentially very unloveable, selfish, malicious individuals and being touched by the futility of their behaviour - the vast majority of their actions pass unremarked by press or public. And as the main protagonist Michael / Chris, tries to forget his past and hide in a bland suburban family life, Kunzru brings out how unsatisfying the replacement of idealism with the quest for money and material goods really is. Better passionate belief in a losing cause, than the current belief in nothing Kunzru seems to be saying. Hard to disagree with that point of view. A complex, passionate, engaging and brilliant book
    • 3/5
      Fantastic and inspiring! A must read for all my fellow revlutionary hippies!
    • 5/5
      This was one of those books that had me racing for the end to find out what would happen whilst at the same time dreading having to say goodbye to it. From Chapter 1 I was sucked into its world of squats, causes, activists and terrorists. I finished it infinitely wiser about the world than when I began, and the standard of the writing never dropped below brilliant.I particularly admired the way the author showed the gradual slide of the central character from a genuine belief in CND to involvement in terrorism, and the way he handled the plot’s different time lines. Definitely the best book I’ve read this year: it would take something special to beat it.
    • 2/5
      Interesting topic, yet not entirely satisfying.Michael Frame - alias Chris Carver - is the narrator of the story, which deals with his life as a member of the radicalising peace/hippy movement in the 1960's and '70's and his life as a fugitive in the 1990's. The book has an interesting chronology, skipping through time, backward and forward, which makes it lively. It tries to work out how the mainly peaceful alternative subculture of the 1960's radicalised into an extremist and violent movement in the 1970's. The Chris Carver character is a kind of observer; he is involved, yet he remains vague to the reader. It seems as if his main drives are a vague notion of having to improve society and a crash on a powerful girl. So on the one hand, he is the main character, on the other hand, he isn't really, because he is mainly observing others and events happening around him. I guess this is why I had troubles connecting to the story, or to the main character. I felt as if I was reading a chronology of events. Demonstrations. Meetings. Actions. Attacks. But I missed the inner development of the main character. Also his flight to Asia, his addiction, stay at a monastery, return to England and his undercover existence seemed a bit unlikely and cliché. So I enjoyed this novel less than I thought I would
    • 3/5
      This works as a story if I can distance myself from it as something I want to be authentic. Having lived many years as a fugitive I don't think Kunzru quite captures it. The lead character seems incredibly vague politically and the scenes of him with his adopted daughter really don't work for me. The notion of him informing and then running away seems like an author's plot twist device rather than something that feels authentic. But when I stand back from my desire for it to be authentic the book has some coherence and the tension holds throughout.
    • 4/5
      Audiobook. This book set an interesting challenge for itself. First person. Back and forth beginning with the present. This is the story of a 60s radical who became involved in bombings, etc. Eventually folks in his "cell" died. I'm always interested in stories that tell 60s and Vietnam from the sidelines. I spent the early 60s in Idaho and the late 60s at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. I first encountered the "60s" in 1970 in Seattle--a sitdown against Nixon at U of W. This book tells the story of the 60s from London. The hero escapes, takes a new name and a new life. And now the old life is coming back. I thought this was a very good book. A book about politics that wasn't a lecture. Interesting characters that left you thinking. I liked this book.
    • 4/5
      An interesting look at the winds of rebellion blowing through London in the 1970s. I found the author's all-too-frequent shifts from present to past and vice versa more distracting than enticing. The story also tends to get bogged down in what some might consider heavy-handed propaganda. But the characters we meet along the way are unique.
    • 4/5
      I was about eighty pages into Hari Kunzru’s novel when I suddenly realized what his book, what the voice, remanded me of: Gregory David Roberts Shantaram. It has the same confessional this is the life I’ve led style, the this is how I got here feel. The first person voice seems very similar.But where Roberts’ narrative is more straight forward linear, Kunzru has a way of weaving in and out, with long looks back breaking up his story, though they don’t have that typical flashback feel. It’s a comfortable reading experience and I liked the style very much.Kunzru immerses the reader in the radical times in London of the 70’s. I’m not as familiar with that side of the radical underground, having more familiarity with the counterparts in the US (being of that generation as I am) and even that of Germany and Italy. Reading this book I was also reminded of the feelings I had upon viewing a Gerhard Richter exhibition at MOMA back in 2002. Part of that exhibit was his series entitled October 18, 1977. Images of it kept flickering in my mind as I read Kunzru’s novel.Kunzru probes deeply into the psyche of the radical mind, and it all has a meticulous base of authenticity. At times, the details of the day-to-day workings of the radical cell border on the tedious, but this is a small quibble in a book that very nicely engages the reader in the parallel paths of the making and unmaking of a radical.
    • 3/5
      Hari Kunzru's first novel, The Impressionist, has been at the top of my list of favorite contemporary novels for several years now. Sadly, his next two ventures have not lived up to his first--although I do give him credit for trying something completely different with each new novel. In My Revolutions, a wanted 1970s radical, married to a woman who owns a burgeoning herbal cosmetics company, learns that his cover is about to be blown. Much of the book is a memoir of sorts as Michael/Chris mulls over his past and remembers his political cohorts, including the beautiful and enigmatic Anna. Far too much political ranting for my taste. Although I assume that Kunzru meant his readers to make some connections between then an now, I just got bored with all the windy diatribes about "pigs," "fascists," bombs, takeovers, etc. by whiny, self-centered, immature young people It was enough to make me wish they had all gotten blown up in their last fiasco.I admire The Impressionist and Kunzru's style and humor enough that I still will look forward to his next novel, but this one was a big disappoinment.