Freya - Anthony Quinn

Anthony Quinn’s fourth novel is the story of the era that stretched from VE Day to the time of the Profumo scandal and the birth of the permissive society, seen through the eyes of Freya Wyley. Along the way, we get a look at post-War Oxford, Fleet Street and literary Soho, and thinly veiled portraits of Rebecca West, Francis Bacon, Twiggy and others.

As with Rachel Cooke’s non-fiction Her Brilliant Career, Quinn challenges the view of Fifties woman as ‘a compliant, smiling creature who knows little or nothing of sex, and stands no chance at all of getting to the top of advertising or any other career’. The narrator, Freya, is a headstrong woman who does not fit in with the social conventions of her time. The daughter of a respected portrait artist, she served in the Wrens during the war, and, empowered by this experience, is disinclined to follow the traditional, submissive female roles offered to her in peacetime. She is a dislikeable protagonist, utterly self-centred and generally thoughtless ('in life, you may find that rampant individualism isn't always the best way of getting what you want', one editor remarks, diplomatically). Nothing wrong with that of course – her expletive-heavy ranting is infinitely preferable to the blandness of her flatmate and occasional nemesis Nancy Holdaway.

The narrative begins with the VE Day celebrations in London. The atmosphere gives a hint at the social changes which the novel explores – a gradual shift in gender relations:  'Among the women... she detected something excitable - no, more like hysterical, as if every single one of them were just getting married. Was that why the men looked so dazed?' In this crowd, she meets a younger woman, Nancy, who will become her companion over an occasionally fraught decade. The next day, Freya discovers that her father is having an affair. This marks a closing off of one stage of her life; meeting Nancy marks the start of a new one

Sent down from Oxford, Freya gets a break in journalism, and embarks on a career characterised by her battle to receive the same recognition as her male colleagues. This brings her into contact with many of the luminaries of her era. Quinn is certainly aware of the more fascinating aspects of the period his novel covers. The early stages lean heavily on Rebecca West’s brilliant Train of Powder for its account of the journalists sent to cover the trial of Nazi war criminals. Freya’s early inspiration, Jessica Vaux, is clearly based on West, down to the affair with a married novelist. We get an enjoyably dissolute study of Frances Bacon, a 'vicious little queen who hangs about Soho cadging drinks', and some Colony Club colour, and explorations of the Soviet spy rings and the treatment of homosexuals in the pre-Wolfenden era.
 

Unfortunately, while the author has fertile material to work with, he finds it hard to stay away from cliché. Oxford is characterised by 'cavalcades of students on bicycles', the sun plays ‘a long game of hide and seek' with the clouds, Freya’s upper class relatives say 'orf', and young theatrical types enjoy being spanked with squash racquets.

Freya is a charismatic figure, in stark contrast to her co-star Nancy, and the dialogue is strong throughout. Quinn clearly relished writing his theatrical enfant terrible Nat Fine, and the saturnine artist Ossian Blacker, while the Twiggy-esque Chrissie Effingham  is well-developed and sympathetic. As such, Freya has some high points, particularly the moral dilemma Freya confronts when she finds herself in possession of information which implicates Nancy’s husband in a Profumo-esque scandal. Unfortunately, the novel is let down by the pedestrian prose; the grandness of the narrative arc demands a more refined style. Quinn’s reliance on cliché is a turn-off, and detracts from the reader’s investment in the story.