SUMMARY Demo By Alison Miller

Demo By Alison MillN the personal and the political as each decides what is and what's not worth shouting about But how will they come to shape the world and how will the world come to shape th. i'm not so sure what to make of this I read it easily in one night though it wasn't that flimsy I liked the Scottish voice of the narrators though it certainly wasn't the difficult complete dialect immersion of say Irvine Welsh It felt as it was that it was written by someone who didn't speak that langauge for other people who don't speak that languageMy mixed feelings come from what happens our narrator Claire a 16 year old readhead from a working class Glasgow family travels to Spain for an anti war protest There's a typically skeezy lefty guy dreadlocks piercing blue eyes arrogance ruling class background and all She's fascinated and confused He sleeps with her rapes her and they sleep together again Then she gets kicked out of his room for his ruling class ex girlfriend Who has finally decided she wants him rather than our narrator's older brother Who is pretty much an annoyingly idealised good hearted emotionally uncommunicative working class lad who can do no wrong Except for leaving his teenage sister alone with his clearly lecherous friend But no one ever mentions thatClaire's state was portrayed well her mix of feeling flattered confused hurt excited and repulsed when sleazey hippy dude wants to play out his Henry Miller fantasies out on her Yes really He's almost a cartoon villain sleazey activist man except uite possibly drawn from lifeBut the political setting wasn't so real For a start what are their politics The rapist yells at a French communist for betraying 'us' in the Spanish civil war but then sneers at some anarchists so I guess they're maybe some kind of Trotskyites They don't really talk about politics beyond some fairly common level anti war sentiments and a couple of anthemic drunken mass singalongs This isn't so important I wasn't looking for political diatribes and usually find them grating coming out of the fictional mouths of fictional characters It's that the rhythms of their lives didn't seem like those of people heavily involved in a political group like the characters were meant to be Hey two coachloads of people travel from Glasgow but our protagonists stay alone in a small pensionne not a big cold warehouse of all crammed into a hostel togetherI also can't work out whether the tensions between Claire and her Muslim best friend over her decision to wear hijab is clumsily issue based or not Her friend's mock traslation of her Punjabi placard 'Dreadlocks and hijab against war' was cute though