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Book Reviewed by:A bold, astonishingly intimate novel of laughter and heartbreak, High Dive is a moving portrait of clashing loyalties, guilt and regret, and how individuals become the grist of history.
In September 1984, a bomb was planted at the Grand Hotel in the seaside town of Brighton, England, set to explode in twenty-four days when the British prime minister and her entire cabinet would be staying there. High Dive not only takes us inside this audacious assassination attempt - a decisive act of violence on the world stage - but also imagines its way into a group of unforgettable characters.
Nimbly weaving together fact and fiction, comedy and tragedy, the story switches among the perspectives of Dan, a young IRA explosives expert; Moose, a former star athlete gone to seed, who is now the deputy hotel manager; and Freya, his teenage daughter, trying to decide what comes after high school. Over the course of a mere four weeks, as the prime minister's arrival draws closer, each of their lives will be transformed forever.
Overall, High Dive is a cleverly worked story, full of acute observations of character and punctuated by a dark and enjoyable vein of humor. Fictionalizing events leading up to a disaster about which every reader has foreknowledge, allows Lee countless opportunities for dramatic irony. Some may be frustrated by the lack of a "splash" or any explanation of what happens to some of the characters beyond the explosion. But Lee does tie up Dan's story well and crafts an ending that mirrors his opening in a poignant and impressively satisfying fashion...continued
Full Review
(634 words)
(Reviewed by Kate Braithwaite).
In High Dive, Jonathan Lee references many aspects of "The Troubles," a term used to describe the turbulent decades in Northern Ireland between 1960 and 2000. At issue was a territorial challenge: the overwhelmingly Protestant Loyalists wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom while the nationalists and mainly Catholic republicans were looking to secede and become part of the Republic of Ireland.
The novel frequently references the Maze prison north of Belfast, the notorious H-block section of the Maze and to the death there, in 1981, of Bobby Sands.
The Maze, also known as Long Kesh, or simply the Maze, was built on an airfield and opened in 1971 as an internment camp to house prisoners and paramilitary offenders arrested and ...
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High Dive is both wistful and very funny. It is also genuinely lyrical. But more than anything, what distinguishes it from so many other novels is its rare sincerity.
