This first novel has a lot going for it. Warona Jay challenges the theatre community and, by extension, British society today to address a number of endemic problems, most prominently institutional racism.
The events largely play out in the latter years of the last decade, when most of us might have hoped that the situation faced by the protagonist, Naledi Moruakgomo, a.k.a. Eddie, would have been consigned to ancient history. She splits the narration with a friend and collaborator Hugo, each speaking to the other through two sections of around 70 pages with Eddie getting the final word.
Their initial meeting in a café sets the scene. Eddie, who was born in Botswana but brought up by a single mum in London, has recently completed a postgraduate course in playwriting and is putting the final touches to what she hopes will be a masterpiece. Hugo, an upper-middle-class law student, happens to catch a quick glimpse and opens a conversation that leads in an unexpected direction.
An initial clue lies in the book’s epigram, drawn from Spike Lee’s film BlacKkKlansman, which, for the uninitiated, centres on a black man who manages to inveigle himself into the Ku Klux Klan. After Eddie, having hidden behind a pseudonym, is turned down by “smarmy Helen”, a conceited closet racist running one of the capital’s leading literary agencies, she hatches a cunning plan.
Having concluded that the odds are stacked against a young black woman (queer to boot) when it comes to launching a play into the West End, she enlists Hugo’s help as a front man. The result is almost too successful, as what had been The Worthy, “a near-future dystopia that explored national identity, citizenship, and capitalism", takes on a new title Great Belonging and, with its new white figurehead, goes on to win the country’s premier new playwriting prize with a guaranteed West End production.
Incongruously, Eddie is left working in a burger bar, though soon manages to switch to an editing job on a feminist magazine, while Hugo gives up on the law to swan around as a hot, sexy new playwright. Having got themselves into this predicament, the duo then have to try and extract themselves, which proves rather more challenging.
This is clearly a fine concept for a novel, and Warona Jay follows it through, creating consistent tension while exploring a series of moral dilemmas that should make most readers feel uncomfortable. She could be accused of over-egging the pudding, at times appearing to cram enough melodrama for at least two novels, threatening to veer into soap opera territory but never quite getting there, into what might have been a simpler story that would have brought even sharper focus on to the central themes.
Her main characters often show the kind of authenticity that can only be drawn from real life, while the portrait of the London theatre community will ring many bells with members of the profession, at the same time operating as an eye-opener for those who are only observe from outside.
The big question that only those at the sharp end can answer is whether the kind of racism depicted is now a thing of the past or, as the novel suggests, an ongoing issue. Most of us would like to think that the war on prejudice was won by the enlightened a decade or more ago; Warona Jay suggests otherwise.
The Grand Scheme of Things is a very promising debut, always readable and thought-provoking, consistently building drama right up to the final pages.