Reflections on Sugar Heaven
What a daft way to end a book. Sure, there was a final, exultant proclamation about how much better the working men were as people now that they had organised themselves and tried to fight for their rights, but in terms of the story it was a real let down.
It's not so much that they lost the strike. I kind of new that would happen. It's the way everything took three chapters to peter into nothing.
Sugar Heaven is an oddly uneven book. It spends its time veering wildly between "reportage" and soap opera. One minute you're reading a gripping account of an altercation between the workers and the scabs at the mill, the next minute you're reading about Dulcie hating her husband's ex-wife (until she actually meets her, and then they become best friends - practically love at first sight).
And then, at the end, it goes from "we must reclaim our place on the land to make sure we are in a position to do better next time" to Dulcie being shocked at the existence of legal prostitution (and that somehow leading to her decision to have a baby) and Bill's confession to Hefty (of what, exactly?).
I have a feeling that the end was actually foreshadowed throughout the book. Hefty's taunt in the first few chapters that he had paid for as much as Dulcie had given him so far (leading to her thinking very poorly of him, but for all the wrong reasons*). The references to the fact that Bill doesn't look very well. Elsie's occasional comments that she had a right to flaunt her affair in front of Bill after what he did... Then at the end the concept of regulated prostitution is raised, with the idea put forward that "legal" prostitutes are regularly checked by a doctor, which implies that "illegal" prostitutes may have all sorts of diseases...
The final conversation between Hefty and Bill reveals nothing, but you are left wondering if Bill's great sin - the reason why he seems unwell and his wife is perfectly fine with taking a lover - is the contraction of a sexually transmitted disease from an illegal prostitute.
But, really, is that any way to end a book? Bill confesses something to Hefty that we have to guess from the context of the clues scattered throughout the novel; both men agree that all working class men in the area are intellectually better off now that they have gone through the strike and are on the verge of joining the Communist Party; the end.
It's not the lack of closure, it's the way things suddenly revert back to the soap opera, without quite letting go of the propaganda. The propaganda was easier to stomach when we were talking about the strike - not so much with the sudden prostitution and babies subplot.
*Dulcie's character arc in this novel is annoying. She has every right to object to the fact that her husband had been previously married and had visited prostitutes - especially since he neglected to tell her about this until after marrying her and taking her far away from her friends and family. However, she was also "unthinking" and stubborn, objecting to things purely because she felt they were objectionable, and not because she actually knew why they were objectionable. All that malarky about trying to insist Hefty didn't go any where near anyone or anything connected with his ex-wife, even though he was happy to think of Elsie as Bill's wife and leave it at that. Her fear of being seen in public with a man (any man) who wasn't her husband (what would people say!)... You just wanted to smack her in the head (hence, my last entry). And then, even her "growth" through the strike and the way it encouraged her to think for the first time was also kind of annoying.
I think we were supposed to follow a similar awakening to Dulcie, but her character really just exists so people can explain things to her (and, by association, us) within the context of the novel - so the book didn't spiral into report, rather than reportage. Like that character in Twister who was just there so people could tell her about tornadoes.
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