Review: Those Who Wait, by Haley Cass

Those Who Wait is a stand-alone self-published sapphic romance novel. Given the lack of connection between political figures named in this book and our reality, it's also technically an alternate history, but it will be entirely unsatisfying to anyone who reads it in that genre.

Sutton Spencer is an English grad student in New York City. As the story opens, she has recently realized that she's bisexual rather than straight. She certainly has not done anything about that revelation; the very thought makes her blush. Her friend and roommate Regan, not known for either her patience or her impulse control, decides to force the issue by stealing Sutton's phone, creating a profile on a lesbian dating app, and messaging the first woman Sutton admits being attracted to.

Charlotte Thompson is a highly ambitious politician, current deputy mayor of New York City for health and human services, and granddaughter of the first female president of the United States. She fully intends to become president of the United States herself. The next step on that path is an open special election for a seat in the House of Representatives. With her family political connections and the firm support of the mayor of New York City (who is also dating her brother), she thinks she has an excellent shot of winning.

Charlotte is also a lesbian, something she's known since she was a teenager and which still poses serious problems for a political career. She is therefore out to her family and a few close friends, but otherwise in the closet. Compared to her political ambitions, Charlotte considers her love life almost irrelevant, and therefore has a strict policy of limiting herself to anonymous one-night stands arranged on dating apps. Even that is about to become impossible given her upcoming campaign, but she indulges in one last glance at SapphicSpark before she deletes her account.

Sutton is as far as possible from the sort of person who does one-night stands, which is a shame as far as Charlotte is concerned. It would have been a fun last night out. Despite that, both of them find the other unexpectedly enjoyable to chat with. (There are a lot of text message bubbles in this book.) This is when Sutton has her brilliant idea: Charlotte is charming, experienced, and also kind and understanding of Sutton's anxiety, at least in app messages. Maybe Charlotte can be her mentor? Tell her how to approach women, give her some guidance, point her in the right directions.

Given the genre, you can guess how this (eventually) turns out.

I'm going to say a lot of good things about this book, so let me get the complaints over with first.

As you might guess from that introduction, Charlotte's political career and the danger of being outed are central to this story. This is a bit unfortunate because you should not, under any circumstances, attempt to think deeply about the politics in this book.

In 550 pages, Charlotte does not mention or expound a single meaningful political position. You come away from this book as ignorant about what Charlotte wants to accomplish as a politician as you entered. Apparently she wants to be president because her grandmother was president and she thinks she'd be good at it. The closest the story comes to a position is something unbelievably vague about homeless services and Charlotte's internal assertion that she wants to help people and make real change. There are even transcripts of media interviews, later in the book, and they somehow manage to be more vacuous than US political talk shows, which is saying something. I also can't remember a single mention of fundraising anywhere in this book, which in US politics is absurd (although I will be generous and say this is due to Cass's alternate history).

I assume this was a deliberate choice and Cass didn't want politics to distract from the romance, but as someone with a lot of opinions about concrete political issues, the resulting vague soft-liberal squishiness was actively off-putting. In an actual politician, this would be an entire clothesline of red flags. Thankfully, it's ignorable for the same reason; this is so obviously not the focus of the book that one can mostly perform the same sort of mental trick that one does when ignoring the backdrop in a cheap theater.

My second complaint is that I don't know what Sutton does outside of the romance. Yes, she's an English grad student, and she does some grading and some vaguely-described work and is later referred to a prestigious internship, but this is as devoid of detail as Charlotte's political positions. It's not quite as jarring because Cass does eventually show Sutton helping concretely with her mother's work (about which I have some other issues that I won't get into), but it deprives Sutton of an opportunity to be visibly expert in something. The romance setup casts Charlotte as the experienced one to Sutton's naivete, and I think it would have been a better balance to give Sutton something concrete and tangible that she was clearly better at than Charlotte.

Those complaints aside, I quite enjoyed this. It was a recommendation from the same BookTuber who recommended Delilah Green Doesn't Care, so her recommendations are quickly accumulating more weight. The chemistry between Sutton and Charlotte is quite believable; the dialogue sparkles, the descriptions of the subtle cues they pick up from each other are excellent, and it's just fun to read about how they navigate a whole lot of small (and sometimes large) misunderstandings and mismatches in personality and world view.

Normally, misunderstandings are my least favorite part of a romance novel, but Sutton and Charlotte come from such different perspectives that their misunderstandings feel more justified than is typical. The characters are also fairly mature about working through them: Main characters who track the other character down and insist on talking when something happens they don't understand! Can you imagine! Only with the third-act breakup is the reader dragged through multiple chapters of both characters being miserable, and while I also usually hate third-act breakups, this one is so obviously coming and so clearly advertised from the initial setup that I couldn't really be mad. I did wish the payoff make-up scene at the end of the book had a bit more oomph, though; I thought Sutton's side of it didn't have quite the emotional catharsis that it could have had.

I particularly enjoyed the reasons why the two characters fall in love, and how different they are. Charlotte is delighted by Sutton because she's awkward and shy but also straightforward and frequently surprisingly blunt, which fits perfectly with how much Charlotte is otherwise living in a world of polished politicians in constant control of their personas. Sutton's perspective is more physical, but the part I liked was the way that she treats Charlotte like a puzzle. Rather than trying to change how Charlotte expresses herself, she instead discovers that she's remarkably good at reading Charlotte if she trusts her instincts. There was something about Sutton's growing perceptiveness that I found quietly delightful. It's the sort of non-sexual intimacy that often gets lost among the big emotions in romance novels.

The supporting cast was also great. Both characters have deep support networks of friends and family who are unambiguously on their side. Regan is pure chaos, and I would not be friends with her, but Cass shows her deep loyalty in a way that makes her dynamic with Sutton make sense. Both characters have thoughtful and loving families who support them but don't make decisions for them, which is a nice change of pace from the usually more mixed family situations of romance novel protagonists. There's a lot of emotional turbulence in the main relationship, and I think that only worked for me because of how rock-solid and kind the supporting cast is.

This is, as you might guess from the title, a very slow burn, although the slow burn is for the emotional relationship rather than the physical one (for reasons that would be spoilers). As usual, I have no calibration for spiciness level, but I'd say that this was roughly on par with the later books in the Bright Falls series.

If you know something about politics (or political history) and try to take that part of this book seriously, it will drive you to drink, but if you can put that aside and can deal with misunderstandings and emotional turmoil, this was both fun and satisfying. I liked both of the characters, I liked the timing of the alternating viewpoints, and I believed in the relationship and chemistry, as improbable and chaotic as some of the setup was. It's not the greatest thing I ever read, and I wish the ending was a smidgen stronger, but it was an enjoyable way to spend a few reading days. Recommended.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Review: Politics on the Edge, by Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart is a former British diplomat, non-profit executive, member of Parliament, and cabinet minister. Politics on the Edge is a memoir of his time in the UK Parliament from 2019 to 2019 as a Tory (Conservative) representing the Penrith and The Border constituency in northern England. It ends with his failed run against Boris Johnson for leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister.

This book provoked many thoughts, only some of which are about the book. You may want to get a beverage; this review will be long.

Since this is a memoir told in chronological order, a timeline may be useful. After Stewart's time as a regional governor in occupied Iraq (see The Prince of the Marshes), he moved to Kabul to found and run an NGO to preserve traditional Afghani arts and buildings (the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, about which I know nothing except what Stewart wrote in this book). By his telling, he found that work deeply rewarding but thought the same politicians who turned Iraq into a mess were going to do the same to Afghanistan. He started looking for ways to influence the politics more directly, which led him first to Harvard and then to stand for Parliament.

The bulk of this book covers Stewart's time as MP for Penrith and The Border. The choice of constituency struck me as symbolic of Stewart's entire career: He was not a resident and had no real connection to the district, which he chose for political reasons and because it was the nearest viable constituency to his actual home in Scotland. But once he decided to run, he moved to the district and seems sincerely earnest in his desire to understand it and become part of its community. After five years as a backbencher, he joined David Cameron's government in a minor role as Minister of State in the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. He then bounced through several minor cabinet positions (more on this later) before being elevated to Secretary of State for International Development under Theresa May. When May's government collapsed during the fight over the Brexit agreement, he launched a quixotic challenge to Boris Johnson for leader of the Conservative Party.

I have enjoyed Rory Stewart's writing ever since The Places in Between. This book is no exception. Whatever one's other feelings about Stewart's politics (about which I'll have a great deal more to say), he's a talented memoir writer with an understated and contemplative style and a deft ability to shift from concrete description to philosophical debate without bogging down a story. Politics on the Edge is compelling reading at the prose level. I spent several afternoons happily engrossed in this book and had great difficulty putting it down.

I find Stewart intriguing since, despite being a political conservative, he's neither a neoliberal nor any part of the new right. He is instead an apparently-sincere throwback to a conservatism based on epistemic humility, a veneration of rural life and long-standing traditions, and a deep commitment to the concept of public service. Some of his principles are baffling to me, and I think some of his political views are obvious nonsense, but there were several things that struck me throughout this book that I found admirable and depressingly rare in politics.

First, Stewart seems to learn from his mistakes. This goes beyond admitting when he was wrong and appears to include a willingness to rethink entire philosophical positions based on new experience.

I had entered Iraq supporting the war on the grounds that we could at least produce a better society than Saddam Hussein's. It was one of the greatest mistakes in my life. We attempted to impose programmes made up by Washington think tanks, and reheated in air-conditioned palaces in Baghdad — a new taxation system modelled on Hong Kong; a system of ministers borrowed from Singapore; and free ports, modelled on Dubai. But we did it ultimately at the point of a gun, and our resources, our abstract jargon and optimistic platitudes could not conceal how much Iraqis resented us, how much we were failing, and how humiliating and degrading our work had become. Our mission was a grotesque satire of every liberal aspiration for peace, growth and democracy.

This quote comes from the beginning of this book and is a sentiment Stewart already expressed in The Prince of the Marshes, but he appears to have taken this so seriously that it becomes a theme of his political career. He not only realized how wrong he was on Iraq, he abandoned the entire neoliberal nation-building project without abandoning his belief in the moral obligation of international aid. And he, I think correctly, identified a key source of the error: an ignorant, condescending superiority that dismissed the importance of deep expertise.

Neither they, nor indeed any of the 12,000 peacekeepers and policemen who had been posted to South Sudan from sixty nations, had spent a single night in a rural house, or could complete a sentence in Dinka, Nuer, Azande or Bande. And the international development strategy — written jointly between the donor nations — resembled a fading mission statement found in a new space colony, whose occupants had all been killed in an alien attack.

Second, Stewart sincerely likes ordinary people. This shone through The Places in Between and recurs here in his descriptions of his constituents. He has a profound appreciation for individual people who have spent their life learning some trade or skill, expresses thoughtful and observant appreciation for aspects of local culture, and appears to deeply appreciate time spent around people from wildly different social classes and cultures than his own. Every successful politician can at least fake gregariousness, and perhaps that's all Stewart is doing, but there is something specific and attentive about his descriptions of other people, including long before he decided to enter politics, that makes me think it goes deeper than political savvy.

Third, Stewart has a visceral hatred of incompetence. I think this is the strongest through-line of his politics in this book: Jobs in government are serious, important work; they should be done competently and well; and if one is not capable of doing that, one should not be in government. Stewart himself strikes me as an insecure overachiever: fiercely ambitious, self-critical, a bit of a micromanager (I suspect he would be difficult to work for), but holding himself to high standards and appalled when others do not do the same. This book is scathing towards multiple politicians, particularly Boris Johnson whom Stewart clearly despises, but no one comes off worse than Liz Truss.

David Cameron, I was beginning to realise, had put in charge of environment, food and rural affairs a Secretary of State who openly rejected the idea of rural affairs and who had little interest in landscape, farmers or the environment. I was beginning to wonder whether he could have given her any role she was less suited to — apart perhaps from making her Foreign Secretary. Still, I could also sense why Cameron was mesmerised by her. Her genius lay in exaggerated simplicity. Governing might be about critical thinking; but the new style of politics, of which she was a leading exponent, was not. If critical thinking required humility, this politics demanded absolute confidence: in place of reality, it offered untethered hope; instead of accuracy, vagueness. While critical thinking required scepticism, open-mindedness and an instinct for complexity, the new politics demanded loyalty, partisanship and slogans: not truth and reason but power and manipulation. If Liz Truss worried about the consequences of any of this for the way that government would work, she didn't reveal it.

And finally, Stewart has a deeply-held belief in state capacity and capability. He and I may disagree on the appropriate size and role of the government in society, but no one would be more disgusted by an intentional project to cripple government in order to shrink it than Stewart.

One of his most-repeated criticisms of the UK political system in this book is the way the cabinet is formed. All ministers and secretaries come from members of Parliament and therefore branches of government are led by people with no relevant expertise. This is made worse by constant cabinet reshuffles that invalidate whatever small amounts of knowledge a minister was able to gain in nine months or a year in post. The center portion of this book records Stewart's time being shuffled from rural affairs to international development to Africa to prisons, with each move representing a complete reset of the political office and no transfer of knowledge whatsoever.

A month earlier, they had been anticipating every nuance of Minister Rogerson's diary, supporting him on shifts twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But it was already clear that there would be no pretence of a handover — no explanation of my predecessor's strategy, and uncompleted initiatives. The arrival of a new minister was Groundhog Day. Dan Rogerson was not a ghost haunting my office, he was an absence, whose former existence was suggested only by the black plastic comb.

After each reshuffle, Stewart writes of trying to absorb briefings, do research, and learn enough about his new responsibilities to have the hope of making good decisions, while growing increasingly frustrated with the system and the lack of interest by most of his colleagues in doing the same. He wants government programs to be successful and believes success requires expertise and careful management by the politicians, not only by the civil servants, a position that to me both feels obviously correct and entirely at odds with politics as currently practiced.

I found this a fascinating book to read during the accelerating collapse of neoliberalism in the US and, to judge by current polling results, the UK. I have a theory that the political press are so devoted to a simplistic left-right political axis based on seating arrangements during the French Revolution that they are missing a significant minority whose primary political motivation is contempt for arrogant incompetence. They could be convinced to vote for Sanders or Trump, for Polanski or Farage, but will never vote for Biden, Starmer, Romney, or Sunak.

Such voters are incomprehensible to those who closely follow and debate policies because their hostile reaction to the center is not about policies. It's about lack of trust and a nebulous desire for justice. They've been promised technocratic competence and the invisible hand of market forces for most of their lives, and all of it looks like lies. Everyday living is more precarious, more frustrating, more abusive and dehumanizing, and more anxious, despite (or because of) this wholehearted embrace of economic "freedom." They're sick of every complaint about the increasing difficulty of life being met with accusations about their ability and work ethic, and of being forced to endure another round of austerity by people who then catch a helicopter ride to a party on some billionaire's yacht.

Some of this is inherent in the deep structural weaknesses in neoliberal ideology, but this is worse than an ideological failure. The degree to which neoliberalism started as a project of sincere political thinkers is arguable, but that is clearly not true today. The elite class in politics and business is now thoroughly captured by people whose primary skill is the marginal manipulation of complex systems for their own power and benefit. They are less libertarian ideologues than narcissistic mediocrities. We are governed by management consultants. They are firmly convinced their organizational expertise is universal, and consider the specific business of the company, or government department, irrelevant.

Given that context, I found Stewart's instinctive revulsion towards David Cameron quite revealing. Stewart, later in the book, tries to give Cameron some credit by citing several policy accomplishments and comparing him favorably to Boris Johnson (which, true, is a bar Cameron probably flops over). But I think Stewart's baffled astonishment at Cameron's vapidity says a great deal about how we have ended up where we are. This last quote is long, but I think it provides a good feel for Stewart's argument in this book.

But Cameron, who was rumoured to be sceptical about nation-building projects, only nodded, and then looking confidently up and down the table said, "Well, at least we all agree on one extremely straightforward and simple point, which is that our troops are doing very difficult and important work and we should all support them."

It was an odd statement to make to civilians running humanitarian operations on the ground. I felt I should speak. "No, with respect, we do not agree with that. Insofar as we have focused on the troops, we have just been explaining that what the troops are doing is often futile, and in many cases making things worse." Two small red dots appeared on his cheeks. Then his face formed back into a smile. He thanked us, told us he was out of time, shook all our hands, and left the room.

Later, I saw him repeat the same line in interviews: "the purpose of this visit is straightforward... it is to show support for what our troops are doing in Afghanistan". The line had been written, in London, I assumed, and tested on focus groups. But he wanted to convince himself it was also a position of principle.

"David has decided," one of his aides explained, when I met him later, "that one cannot criticise a war when there are troops on the ground."

"Why?"

"Well... we have had that debate. But he feels it is a principle of British government."

"But Churchill criticised the conduct of the Boer War; Pitt the war with America. Why can't he criticise wars?"

"British soldiers are losing their lives in this war, and we can't suggest they have died in vain."

"But more will die, if no one speaks up..."

"It is a principle thing. And he has made his decision. For him and the party."

"Does this apply to Iraq too?"

"Yes. Again he understands what you are saying, but he voted to support the Iraq War, and troops are on the ground."

"But surely he can say he's changed his mind?"

The aide didn't answer, but instead concentrated on his food. "It is so difficult," he resumed, "to get any coverage of our trip." He paused again. "If David writes a column about Afghanistan, we will struggle to get it published."

"But what would he say in an article anyway?" I asked.

"We can talk about that later. But how do you get your articles on Afghanistan published?"

I remembered how the US politicians and officials had shown their mastery of strategy and detail. I remembered the earnestness of Gordon Brown when I had briefed him on Iraq. Cameron seemed somehow less serious. I wrote as much in a column in the New York Times, saying that I was afraid the party of Churchill was becoming the party of Bertie Wooster.

I don't know Stewart's reputation in Britain, or in the constituency that he represented. I know he's been accused of being a self-aggrandizing publicity hound, and to some extent this is probably true. It's hard to find an ambitious politician who does not have that instinct. But whatever Stewart's flaws, he can, at least, defend his politics with more substance than a corporate motto. One gets the impression that he would respond favorably to demonstrated competence linked to a careful argument, even if he disagreed. Perhaps this is an illusion created by his writing, but even if so, it's a step in the right direction.

When people become angry enough at a failing status quo, any option that promises radical change and punishment for the current incompetents will sound appealing. The default collapse is towards demagogues who are skilled at expressing anger and disgust and are willing to promise simple cures because they are indifferent to honesty. Much of the political establishment in the US, and possibly (to the small degree that I can analyze it from an occasional news article) in the UK, can identify the peril of the demagogue, but they have no solution other than a return to "politics as usual," represented by the amoral mediocrity of a McKinsey consultant. The rare politicians who seem to believe in something, who will argue for personal expertise and humility, who are disgusted by incompetence and have no patience for facile platitudes, are a breath of fresh air.

There are a lot of policies on which Stewart and I would disagree, and perhaps some of his apparent humility is an affectation from the rhetorical world of the 1800s that he clearly wishes he were inhabiting, but he gives the strong impression of someone who would shoulder a responsibility and attempt to execute it with competence and attention to detail. He views government as a job, where coworkers should cooperate to achieve defined goals, rather than a reality TV show. The arc of this book, like the arc of current politics, is the victory of the reality TV show over the workplace, and the story of Stewart's run against Boris Johnson is hard reading because of it, but there's a portrayal here of a different attitude towards politics that I found deeply rewarding.

If you liked Stewart's previous work, or if you want an inside look at parliamentary politics, highly recommended. I will be thinking about this book for a long time.

Rating: 9 out of 10