Description
Rich or poor, five people, seemingly very different, find their lives in the capital connected in undreamed-of ways. There is Job, the illegal mini-cab driver whose wife in Zimbabwe no longer answers his letters; Ian, the idealistic supply teacher in exile from South Africa; Katie from New York, jilted and miserable as a dogsbody at a political magazine, and fifteen-year-old Anna, trafficked into sexual slavery. Polly Noble, an overworked human rights lawyer, knows better than most how easy it is to fall through the cracks into the abyss. Yet when her au pair, Iryna, disappears, Polly's own needs and beliefs drag her family into a world of danger, deceit and terror. Riveting, humane, engaging, HEARTS AND MINDS is a novel that is both entertaining and prepared to ask the most serious questions about the way we live.… (more)
Genres
Collection
Publication
Abacus (2010)
User reviews
LibraryThing member kidzdoc
This novel, which was longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize, is set in contemporary London, and opens with the discovery of the body of a young unknown woman in a pond in upscale Hampstead Heath. From there we are introduced to the five main characters: Polly, an divorced asylum lawyer, who fiercely
The five live separate lives of near constant frustration and occasional menace, in a faceless city where the police are indifferent and all except the most wealthy are emotionally abraded and cross. Through them and several minor characters Craig shows us the underside of life in the capital, where illegal immigrants fill the jobs that are beneath the dignity of other Londoners, and live hand to mouth in a daily battle to earn enough to survive, while steering clear of the constant threat of discovery by authorities and deportation back to their home countries. A series of unrelated and increasing threats affect each of the characters, and the author expertly weaves their stories and lives together in a tale that is both believable and compelling.
Hearts and Minds is a superb novel which gives the reader a view of the lives of the invisible and voiceless workers of the underground economy of a large city in the context of a gripping story. Highly recommended!
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struggles to combine her career with motherhood; Job, an educated and literate immigrant from Zimbabwe, who has fled to the capital to avoid the horrors of his homeland; Ian, a white South African teacher in a rundown public school where chaos and violence is a constant threat; Anna, a 15 year old girl who agrees to emigrate to London to become a hotel chambermaid but is forced into sexual slavery; and Katie, a young American who works as the personal assistant for the publisher of the Rambler, a London daily best known for controversy rather than accuracy and good taste. The five live separate lives of near constant frustration and occasional menace, in a faceless city where the police are indifferent and all except the most wealthy are emotionally abraded and cross. Through them and several minor characters Craig shows us the underside of life in the capital, where illegal immigrants fill the jobs that are beneath the dignity of other Londoners, and live hand to mouth in a daily battle to earn enough to survive, while steering clear of the constant threat of discovery by authorities and deportation back to their home countries. A series of unrelated and increasing threats affect each of the characters, and the author expertly weaves their stories and lives together in a tale that is both believable and compelling.
Hearts and Minds is a superb novel which gives the reader a view of the lives of the invisible and voiceless workers of the underground economy of a large city in the context of a gripping story. Highly recommended!
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LibraryThing member Pensnippety
Hearts and Minds enthralled me. The over-riding theme is the effect of immigrants, both legal and illegal, on modern-day life and how individual responses to this phenomenon define and challenge different people in different ways. The lives of six characters (five being human, the other London) are
The other aspect I loved about the characters is that they are so human and so real; Polly is a human rights lawyers and believes fervently in her cause; helping those who deserve asylum and trying to prevent their deportation yet she is not "goody-goody" or perfect; the reader is privy to all her insecurities and also frivolities. Job, the Zimbabwean, is a very good person but he also strays. The outsider view on the English as expressed in different ways by the characters is also very insightful and amusing. London too is a character in this novel; not glorified or prettified but shown as big, bustling, impatient, exclusionary, grimy but also pretty and village-like at times.
The storyline is compelling, I could not put it down but it is by no means one of those formulaic page-turners that I despise. The resolution of each characters' dilemma is neither predictable nor unsatisfying; a difficult balance to strike. The novel deals with human trafficking, racial and religious intolerance/ignorance, crime, institutional callousness and the single mother, all of which are highly relevant to our times. Despite being set in London, there is a universality in that many countries experience these things in different ways. I believe there are readers who, after reading this book, may well re-examine their own responses to `the other'.
The humour that popped up unexpectedly now and then had me laughing out loud. I particularly liked it when Polly, the single mother, said she needed a wife. I often said this to the men at work but had not heard it from anyone else before.
Highly recommended
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intertwined in an uncontrived manner. The five characters hail from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, USA and England respectively. As a South African, I particularly loved the insight the writer has into subtle aspects of our country. This is unusual as in my experience only South African writers manage to capture these nuances. Even the fact that one character claims, incorrectly, that white people cannot work as teachers in schools in SA because of their colour, it is true that many white people do talk this way. (The facts are that despite affirmative action only 5% of whites are unemployed while 40% of blacks are unemployed). The other aspect I loved about the characters is that they are so human and so real; Polly is a human rights lawyers and believes fervently in her cause; helping those who deserve asylum and trying to prevent their deportation yet she is not "goody-goody" or perfect; the reader is privy to all her insecurities and also frivolities. Job, the Zimbabwean, is a very good person but he also strays. The outsider view on the English as expressed in different ways by the characters is also very insightful and amusing. London too is a character in this novel; not glorified or prettified but shown as big, bustling, impatient, exclusionary, grimy but also pretty and village-like at times.
The storyline is compelling, I could not put it down but it is by no means one of those formulaic page-turners that I despise. The resolution of each characters' dilemma is neither predictable nor unsatisfying; a difficult balance to strike. The novel deals with human trafficking, racial and religious intolerance/ignorance, crime, institutional callousness and the single mother, all of which are highly relevant to our times. Despite being set in London, there is a universality in that many countries experience these things in different ways. I believe there are readers who, after reading this book, may well re-examine their own responses to `the other'.
The humour that popped up unexpectedly now and then had me laughing out loud. I particularly liked it when Polly, the single mother, said she needed a wife. I often said this to the men at work but had not heard it from anyone else before.
Highly recommended
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LibraryThing member dsc73277
Tremendous. I started out thinking this was going to be a very heavy and gloomy, if worthy, take on life amongst struggling immigrants, and a struggling divorced solicitor and mother, in London. However, the further I got through this the more eager I became to find out what was going to happen
"Hearts and Minds" calls to mind Dickens, for several reasons. For one thing, one of the characters, a taxi driver who has fled Mugabe's Zimbabwe, is an avid reader and a great admirer of the writer. Then there are the inevitable parallels one tends to draw between any modern novel dealing with London life and the works of Dickens, the great literary chronicler of the same city in the Victorian age. Just as in Dickens, we see how a cast of disperate characters are brought together by proximity, genetics - in the case of a South African who has come to Britain to meet his father, commercial transactions, or simply mere chance.
Some may find its depiction of tough inner city schools somewhat cliched. For my own part it reminded me why I never wanted ot teach. I always used to tell people it was because I did not want to do "crowd control", a phrase which is used here.
Others may find the professions of the white, middle class English characters rather too typical of novels set in London. Polly, the struggling working mum, is in the law and the offices of a magazine that sounds very similar to The Spectator also figure prominently. I didn't mind that. Apart from anything else, if you wanted to depict the chattering classes it is almost inevitable that you would look to the legal or media worlds: they are at the heart of the modern British establishment.
Best of all, despite containing so much suffering and trouble, "Hearts and Minds" ends on a positive note.
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next."Hearts and Minds" calls to mind Dickens, for several reasons. For one thing, one of the characters, a taxi driver who has fled Mugabe's Zimbabwe, is an avid reader and a great admirer of the writer. Then there are the inevitable parallels one tends to draw between any modern novel dealing with London life and the works of Dickens, the great literary chronicler of the same city in the Victorian age. Just as in Dickens, we see how a cast of disperate characters are brought together by proximity, genetics - in the case of a South African who has come to Britain to meet his father, commercial transactions, or simply mere chance.
Some may find its depiction of tough inner city schools somewhat cliched. For my own part it reminded me why I never wanted ot teach. I always used to tell people it was because I did not want to do "crowd control", a phrase which is used here.
Others may find the professions of the white, middle class English characters rather too typical of novels set in London. Polly, the struggling working mum, is in the law and the offices of a magazine that sounds very similar to The Spectator also figure prominently. I didn't mind that. Apart from anything else, if you wanted to depict the chattering classes it is almost inevitable that you would look to the legal or media worlds: they are at the heart of the modern British establishment.
Best of all, despite containing so much suffering and trouble, "Hearts and Minds" ends on a positive note.
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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
Simply marvellous. The novel revolves around five characters and the intricate way in which they all gradually become involved with each other. Exquisitely plotted, the author never once lets the string of coincidences impair the underlying plausibility of the story, and all of the characters are
Amanda Craid also manages to deliver blistering attacks on the plights of asylum seekers, and the manner in whcih the underclass become almost invisible to the bulk of the population though a communal wave of denial, though she achieves this without ever seeming to proselytise. All in all a quite enchanting novel, and I look forward to reading her previous works.
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beautifully drawn.Amanda Craid also manages to deliver blistering attacks on the plights of asylum seekers, and the manner in whcih the underclass become almost invisible to the bulk of the population though a communal wave of denial, though she achieves this without ever seeming to proselytise. All in all a quite enchanting novel, and I look forward to reading her previous works.
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LibraryThing member jayne_charles
This was like wandering along a street with many tributary roads all of which seem worth investigating. Built loosely around a murder, I guessed the perpetrator before the halfway mark but it hardly mattered because there was so much else going on in this excellent novel. I particularly admire the
The book investigates the issue of multiculturalism and the immigrant experience in London through the eyes of characters from many walks of life, and by doing so makes a number of astute points. Stereotypes are challenged (a non-racist white South African, an American who seems more British than the British, a struggling Romanian immigrant with a surprising profession). The characters are suffused with a kind of rosy glow, all seem well meaning, with the possible exception of the Islamic family , the only bit where accusations of negative stereotyping might be made.
There was humour too amid the bleakness. Sebastian in particular was tremendous value for his half a page or so of action. All in all an excellent read, my favourite so far by this author.
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way Amanda Craig depicts people in impoverished circumstances – just when you think things can’t get any worse, they invariably do.The book investigates the issue of multiculturalism and the immigrant experience in London through the eyes of characters from many walks of life, and by doing so makes a number of astute points. Stereotypes are challenged (a non-racist white South African, an American who seems more British than the British, a struggling Romanian immigrant with a surprising profession). The characters are suffused with a kind of rosy glow, all seem well meaning, with the possible exception of the Islamic family , the only bit where accusations of negative stereotyping might be made.
There was humour too amid the bleakness. Sebastian in particular was tremendous value for his half a page or so of action. All in all an excellent read, my favourite so far by this author.
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LibraryThing member Helenliz
I'm undecided by this. At one level, it's a set of intermingled London lives. On another, it's a set of stock characters who never really manage to transcend their roles. There are 5 main narrators, Anna (A Ukrainian girl who is traffic and becomes a prostitute), Job (a black Zimbabwean teacher),
So I'm torn, a strange mixture of excellent and inventive along side the cardboard cut outs and stage set events.
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Ian (A white South African teacher), Katy (American) and Polly, the sole resident (second generation jewish). They all intermingle more than change might suggest would actually happen. There are a number of events tht seem to be too staged to be real or believable. Despite that, it works as a though provoking piece of work. So I'm torn, a strange mixture of excellent and inventive along side the cardboard cut outs and stage set events.
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LibraryThing member Daftboy1
This is a very enjoyable book set in London it follows 5 people with very loose connections their stories overlap.
Characters are kind of believable and they all have different reasons for being in London.
Don't want to give the story away but this is a jolly good book.
Characters are kind of believable and they all have different reasons for being in London.
Don't want to give the story away but this is a jolly good book.
LibraryThing member jbennett
Amanda Craig writes a compelling tale about the interleaved lives of contemporary Londoners most of whom are on the margins and in the process shows the underbelly of modern Britain. That makes it sound immensely depressing but in fact it is heart-warming and enjoyable
LibraryThing member oldblack
By coincidence, I read this book immediately after reading Linda Grant's "We Had It So Good", which in many ways covered similar territory: 21st century London impacted by recent and current terrorism. I thought Grant's work put this novel by Amanda Craig very much in the shade. Especially by
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comparison, Craig's plot seems to be rather artificially constructed. We can see that the lives of these people are going to intersect and I felt as I read on that I was listening to someone telling a laborious story whose ending I was pretty sure I knew. The characters tended to be somewhat caricatures rather than real people - even down to their names (can we guess that Polly Noble is a human rights lawyer?). I don't want to sound too negative because there was in fact a certain appeal in the way that through most of the book Craig was careful to avoid demonising one group and attempted to accurately portray the complexity of the social situation. And many readers will find the the triumph of good over evil to be satisfying, even if it is unrealistic. Show Less
LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
Quite simply, this is an extraordinary novel, although sadly I think it is beyond my powers to describe it adequately without making it sound too fanciful. Amanda Craig captures the multi-tiered aspects of London society as it edges toward the almost catastrophic financial downturn that arose from
The story revolves around five principal characters and the intricate way in which they all gradually become involved with each other. We meet Polly, a divorcee and single mother whose work as a human rights lawyer takes up most of her waking hours, leaving her permanently exhausted and struggling to balance the demands of family life. As the novel opens, her plight becomes even more stressful as Iryna, the Russian au pair who had been so fundamental to the stability of her household, disappears.
Meanwhile Job is an illegal immigrant who fled poverty, oppression and torture in Zimbabwe. Having managed to garner enough money to secure a flight to London, he is now straining to balance two draining jobs, switching between working as a minicab driver and handwashing smart cars at a dubious establishment in the hinterland of King’s Cross. Between these two posts he manages to scrape enough money to pay his rent for a dreadful bedsit, and also to send a small sum each month back home to his wife in Zimbabwe. It is now more than six months since he received any word from his wife, and he is no longer confident that she is even still alive.
Ian Bredin is a South African, working as a teacher at an inner London comprehensive school, still facing another two terms before he can secure his ‘Qualified Teacher’ status. The school is underfunded, and nearly all of the pupils are disaffected: bullying is rife, and religious divides within the diverse, multicultural school population are already becoming prevalent. Despite his best intentions, Ian finds that he spends most of his time merely preventing fights from breaking out in the classroom, and he knows that he never manages actually to teach his pupils anything.
Katie is from New England, and decamps to London following a failed relationship with a man from an immensely wealthy family, but who turned out, despite a charming carapace, to be boorish beyond measure. Now in London, Katie finds herself struggling to survive in what seems a very lonely city. She works as assistant (almost skivvy) to the editor of the twenty-first century iteration of The Rambler, the weekly journal that in former times had been journalistic home to the likes of Dr Johnson, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.
Anna is a fifteen year old Lithuanian girl who leaps at the opportunity to escape from what she fears will be a life of utter drudgery. Her hopes of a new life soar when a young woman who had been a couple of years ahead of her at school returns from London, clad in marvellous chic clothes and make up, eager to recruit other girls to come and join her there, working as waitresses or chambermaid. Anna cannot be dissuaded from throwing her lot in, only to find that she has been trafficked, and is pitched into a life of what seems like unremitting Hell.
All five of them will find their stories intersecting in the most shattering way. Exquisitely plotted, the author never once lets the string of coincidences impair the underlying plausibility of the story, and all of the characters are beautifully drawn.
Amanda Craig also manages to deliver blistering attacks on the plights of asylum seekers, and the manner in which the underclass become almost invisible to the bulk of the population though a communal wave of denial, though she achieves this without ever seeming to proselytise. All in all this is an enchanting novel, and a great way to start a new year of reading.
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the ‘credit crunch’ of 2008.The story revolves around five principal characters and the intricate way in which they all gradually become involved with each other. We meet Polly, a divorcee and single mother whose work as a human rights lawyer takes up most of her waking hours, leaving her permanently exhausted and struggling to balance the demands of family life. As the novel opens, her plight becomes even more stressful as Iryna, the Russian au pair who had been so fundamental to the stability of her household, disappears.
Meanwhile Job is an illegal immigrant who fled poverty, oppression and torture in Zimbabwe. Having managed to garner enough money to secure a flight to London, he is now straining to balance two draining jobs, switching between working as a minicab driver and handwashing smart cars at a dubious establishment in the hinterland of King’s Cross. Between these two posts he manages to scrape enough money to pay his rent for a dreadful bedsit, and also to send a small sum each month back home to his wife in Zimbabwe. It is now more than six months since he received any word from his wife, and he is no longer confident that she is even still alive.
Ian Bredin is a South African, working as a teacher at an inner London comprehensive school, still facing another two terms before he can secure his ‘Qualified Teacher’ status. The school is underfunded, and nearly all of the pupils are disaffected: bullying is rife, and religious divides within the diverse, multicultural school population are already becoming prevalent. Despite his best intentions, Ian finds that he spends most of his time merely preventing fights from breaking out in the classroom, and he knows that he never manages actually to teach his pupils anything.
Katie is from New England, and decamps to London following a failed relationship with a man from an immensely wealthy family, but who turned out, despite a charming carapace, to be boorish beyond measure. Now in London, Katie finds herself struggling to survive in what seems a very lonely city. She works as assistant (almost skivvy) to the editor of the twenty-first century iteration of The Rambler, the weekly journal that in former times had been journalistic home to the likes of Dr Johnson, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins.
Anna is a fifteen year old Lithuanian girl who leaps at the opportunity to escape from what she fears will be a life of utter drudgery. Her hopes of a new life soar when a young woman who had been a couple of years ahead of her at school returns from London, clad in marvellous chic clothes and make up, eager to recruit other girls to come and join her there, working as waitresses or chambermaid. Anna cannot be dissuaded from throwing her lot in, only to find that she has been trafficked, and is pitched into a life of what seems like unremitting Hell.
All five of them will find their stories intersecting in the most shattering way. Exquisitely plotted, the author never once lets the string of coincidences impair the underlying plausibility of the story, and all of the characters are beautifully drawn.
Amanda Craig also manages to deliver blistering attacks on the plights of asylum seekers, and the manner in which the underclass become almost invisible to the bulk of the population though a communal wave of denial, though she achieves this without ever seeming to proselytise. All in all this is an enchanting novel, and a great way to start a new year of reading.
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Awards
Women's Prize for Fiction (Longlist — 2010)
Original publication date
2009