Earlier this year a former member of the far-left Baader-Mainhof gang who spent decades in hiding was arrested by German police in connection with the crimes. It was another example of the long afterlife of the antiwar movement of the late 1960s, which Jane Silverman explores in a brilliant, beautifully written new novel, “There’s Going to Be Trouble.”
Capturing it one line after another Allen Ginsberg In the poem – “My mind is made up there’s trouble coming” – Silverman creates a complex, clever plot that weaves together two separate stories involving the main characters.
One takes place in 1968 when Ken, an apolitical grad student at Harvard, takes over a campus building because of his obsessive love for one of the administrators, Olya. When the demonstration goes awry, he must live with the devastating consequences for the rest of his lonely life as a chemistry professor and single father. One of his consoling daughters, Olya, gave birth to him before he fled. Everyone calls her Mino, though she will grow up to embody the intensity of her namesake, Minerva, the Roman goddess of war.
Another story unfolded during 2018 Yellow jacket protest in France Where Minnow, now a 38-year-old teacher, is on the run after being caught up in a scandal in America by the religious right for helping an underage girl get an abortion at her school. In Paris, she falls in with a group of activists who, like their counterparts half a century earlier, are willing to go to virtually any length to challenge the inequalities of French society.
Again, love plays a decisive role. Just as her father falls head over heels for Olya, Minou falls for Charles, the 23-year-old scion of a powerful French family whose father is a confidant of French President Emmanuel Macron. Although she has serious concerns about the 15-year age difference, she can’t keep her hands off him – and the feeling is mutual. Meanwhile, another daring action is being planned that will also have deadly consequences.
Although the novel is a little slow to get off the ground and could have benefited from being 50 pages shorter, it eventually gathers an unstoppable force as it builds toward a dramatic critique that offers no easy conclusion. Is. The questions Silverman raises about the ends and sources of political violence are as relevant today as they were in the 60s—or, for that matter, in any era.
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