The best books about love and paranoia in Cold War Britain and America

This novel took me into the poverty and mindset of post-WW2 Britain. Set in London, we follow two couples, English Queenie and Bernard, and Jamaican Gilbert and Hortense, as their lives become interwoven. Instead of communist paranoia, this novel is about another kind of fear-induced prejudice – racism. We feel the excitement and anticipation of the Windrush generation as they arrive in their ‘Mother land’ only to find a cold, prejudiced and hostile place. It deals with homesickness, feelings of alienation, and the misunderstandings that occur on the streets of London as the newly arrived Gilbert and Hortense search for a way to make a life for themselves. But as well as cruelty, there is also compassion. 

Kingsolver is such a brilliant writer—she deals with weighty themes, but always with an emotional heart. This doorstop of a novel features real historical characters and events, but with a fictional American protagonist: Harrison Shepherd. Shepherd is raised in Mexico by his Mexican mother, works for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and meets Trotsky. When he returns to post-WW2 America, he finds a paranoid society—the McCarthy communist witch-hunts are underway, and Harrison, a novelist, is caught up in them. The story becomes enveloped in a sense of suffocation, as Harrison’s neighbours turn against him, and FBI agents hound him. The world around him is shaped by prejudice and suspicion. The novel is largely told through diaries, notebooks, and an editor’s notes. 

This book helped me to get inside the mind of suburban 50s Americans. The Wheelers are an all-American couple, living the American Dream, where everything must be perfect. April and Frank are beautiful and successful with lovely children and a lovely house. But not far under the gleaming surface, rot is festering. Feelings of unhappiness, loneliness, frustration, disappointment, and boredom are destroying April and Frank, and their marriage. The novel dissects the Wheeler’s relationship as they struggle against the trap society has set them of needing to keep up appearances. There is adultery and domestic violence. Only one voice points out the lie, stabs at the heart of the problem, but it comes from someone’s grown-up son, a character who is mentally ill, and therefore ignored.

While doing research into Ruby’s backstory, I discovered this book. It reads like a novel but tells the stories of four real women who married American servicemen and left war-torn Britain for the more lavish lifestyle available to Americans in the 50s. But the arduous journey by sea, the intrusive and humiliating health examinations waiting on the other side, and the strangeness of a strange land provided challenges and difficulties. Each woman’s experience is different, but each is determined not to give up on their dream. An epilogue tells of how their marriages and lives worked out. Fascinating. 

I first came across this story in the classic 1962 film version. The original novel was published in 1959. It’s a political thriller about the military son of a US political family who’s brainwashed after capture in Korea into being an assassin for a communist conspiracy. Back in the USA, he commits murders on behalf of the communists while in a hypnotic state, with no memory of his actions afterwards. It’s a dark and chilling classic of Cold War paranoia, and I read it as part of my research before I wrote How It ends.