There Ain't No Justice - Just Us

Rating:
Summary: A rare example of polemical fiction that works
Review: There Ain't No Justice, Just Us (which is, I might add, a great title) is the story of David, a veteran of the '60s protest movement who now finds himself living out of place and time in an impersonal Chicago. Just as the city seems to be slowly dying, so has David's once firm faith in Marxism. Unlike his former comrades, David has remained an activist and as a result, his marriage his crumbling and he risks seeing his children taken away from him. Hoping to rediscover his political faith, David takes a job at ChicagoLard, a Hellish factory where he helps to organize the racially divided workers into organizing a strike that leads them into increasingly heated conflict with both their bosses and their own union. There Ain't No Justice, Just Us is an unabashedly political novel. It wears its Marxist sympathies on its sleeve and, like a modern day Upton Sinclair, author Gregory Alan Norton peppers his plot with scenes in which his characters discuss and defend socialism against premature reports of the movement's death. What sets Norton's novel apart from other political novels is that Norton never allows his ideology to overwhelm his story or characters. As opposed to other Marxist writers, Norton allows his politics to come through the character as opposed to crudely shaping his characters to force them to conform to political theory. As a result, Norton is an honest enough writer to create human capitalists and flawed socialists instead of creating a black-and-white polemic. Ranging from his own sometimes rather crude narrator to the strikers' flamboyant attorney Lexy (who comes across as everything Bella Abzug was supposed to be) to the book's most complicated character, a Neo-Nazi mechanic who turns out to be the most committed striker as well as the least trustworthy, the book is full of memorable and vivid characters who capture the reader's interest. Whether or not one agrees with Norton's politics (and, as my other reviews should make obviously, I am one hundred eighty degrees to the right of the author), its hard not to care about these characters and impossible not to become emotionally involved in the outcome of their struggle. This is a book that I would recommend to any open minded reader interested in modern political fiction -- one need not agree with Norton to admire the craft and skill with which he delivers his message. Gregory Alan Norton is not a household name and There Ain't No Justice, No Just Us is an independently-published, "underground" book. However, that doesn't change the fact that Norton has managed to pull off what so many more bestselling authors have continually failed to accomplish. He has written a proudly and defiant left-wing novel that can impress and enthrall even as right-wing a reader as myself.