The Small Book

by Zina Rohan

July 1915, the Somme. Private Ken Hoskins has been detailed to a firing squad to execute a deserter from his own company. This experience so appalls him that when he returns to his native Lancashire he joins the nascent Communist Party and on his marriage determines to bring up his children 'in the faith'. His daughter, Pam, later moves to London to become secretary to Harry Pollitt, the Party leader. Summer 1998, London. Ken Hoskins's grandchildren, Margaret and Roy, look alike but could not be more dissimilar. She is a defence analyst; he is a celebrated photographer. She still lives in the King's Cross council flat where they grew up; he occupies a Holland Park mansion. Yet they are unusually close, kept so by dramatic changes in their lives and the subsequent oddities in their upbringing. But things do not develop as Ken Hoskins had hoped, and for Roy and Margaret the past they thought was their inheritance turns out to be something quite different.

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 18, 2010

Reviews

[Judith Starkston]

The Small Book opens in 1915 with a doctor’s diary entry from the frontlines of the World War I describing the execution of a private for desertion. “This has been a wretched business. They have made a murderer out of me and all of us who were present.”

While the book quickly jumps to 1946 and later to 1998, the repercussions continue throughout from this soldier’s death at the hands of his own side, although a full understanding of just how these repercussions play out does not come until the very end of the book. Rather than a plot-driven page-turner, The Small Book is primarily a book of ideas arising from this extraordinarily disturbing event with all its implications for the men who were forced to shoot, the man shot, for the family left behind, for the country that chose to condemn its soldier.

Characters give life to The Small Book through the distinctive voices Rohan creates for the multiple narrators. The clear delineation of narrative voices is perhaps Rohan’s most impressive accomplishment. There is no mistaking Pam for Roy, even if the narrative shifts weren’t labeled, and as the book leaps through the stages of the narrators’ lives, so their voices age distinctly and appropriately. Rohan has done a good job of using these voices to reveal the effects of the execution over time. So, for example, Pam, the first major narrator we hear, is locked into a fierce and unquestioning loyalty to the Communist Party in England because of her father’s war experience, and it colors her way of seeing life and her choice of language: “And that was all down to Father, who’d signed up to the Party as soon as it was launched because of the way they’d executed the deserters—well, that’s what they called them—in the First War. First he had the nightmares from having to do it, then he joined the Party. Better to be doing things than having nightmares is what Father always used to say.” Her father was sure the convictions were all to do with class and there’d been an injustice. He imbues his daughter with this sensibility, and it becomes her guiding principle, even to the exclusion of other ways of looking at or for life. There are times when Pam’s limitations grate, but that is the point, I think. The multiple voices provide the needed lenses to unravel both the “what happened” and the “what does it mean.” This is a thinking book.

You will be intrigued with the complex web of events and relationships that is gradually revealed over the course of the book, and the ways in which one historical moment can shape such seemingly unrelated issues as how someone will or will not find lasting love, how children will develop into adults, how the rhythms of daily life will fall into place.

[Mandy]

In July 1915, on the Somme, Ken Hoskins is detailed to a firing squad to execute an alleged deserter from his own company. When he returns from the war, he is haunted by the incident, and the experience shapes the rest of his life, and the lives of his family, as he tries to make amends.
This is an intelligent, well -written and absorbing novel, a powerful story about the effects of both concealing and of revealing the truth. Told in first person accounts from the key protagonists, Rohan expertly alternates the voices and weaves the separate narratives into a seamless whole. The narrative is balanced by the characters' thoughts about society and politics, with an intriguing glimpse into the world of the nascent Communist Party of Great Britain. It is an extremely thought-provoking tale, especially about the executions of deserters in WW1, an engrossing historical novel as well as a family saga and I found it very moving. The style is lucid and well-paced, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

[Eva Hnizdo]

Very interesting, the communist party in England, the problems in 1956 Hungary Soviet invasion, well written, much more than " a small book ".Told me something about England that I didn't know.