The novel opens with a journalistic account of a crime. One evening at a countryside farmhouse in the lockdown of 2020, a young man, Jake, bludgeoned another, Pegasus, with a bar of solid gold until he lost consciousness. The farmhouse was the scene of an illegal party, where Pegasus and his cohort of “Universalist” anti-capitalist activists were squatting. The property had been recently renovated to a luxurious standard by a London banker, Richard Spencer, as a country home. Jake was a member of the group, but had that day been evicted in a unanimous decision from the Universalists, despite being the one to have sourced the property in the first place. After the incident, Jake disappears, taking the gold bar with him.
Richard Spencer is the owner of the property (and the gold bar). A stockbroker at a major investment bank, he owns multiple properties and has substantial wealth. He had given Jake access to the farm as a favour to Lenny, a neighbour in his Kensington mansion block with whom he has been having an affair. Lenny turns out to be Miriam Leonard, journalist and bestselling author of NO MO’ WOKE, an anthology of her articles on “the imminent threat of ‘woke culture and anti-white sentiment’”.
In researching the story, the author seems to work out that Lenny is Jake’s mother, and eventually tracks him down to his hiding place – his mother’s flat in the building she shares with Richard Spencer. Jake turns himself in to the police. Pegasus recovers and doesn’t hold a grudge. As the article closes, Spencer laments that the police have not yet returned his gold bar. In the account of the characters and actions, he comes off poorly. The article ends: “In the cold light of 2021, Richard Spencer’s conduct begs the question: Why does our society tolerate these greedy, pitiful men?”
In the second section, the narrative tone changes. Now we follow Hannah, the author of the above article, reflecting on her transition from struggling journalist to successful writer, as she prepares to host a dinner party at her flat. The Spencer/Jake piece had landed on her desk out of the blue when she was on the verge of leaving journalism forever. Then she opened her inbox and found a message from Miriam Leonard. The story evolved with the close input, it turns out, of Lenny.
Among Hannah’s dinner guests are Martin, an old flame and a journalist himself, and a couple, John and Guin, who are friends from university. Hannah remembers that when she was unable to afford her rent and could barely feed herself, these friends disappeared from her life, but following the viral success of the article, and further successes, including the sale of the motion picture rights, they are back on the scene. As her guests arrive, they comment on the unsavoury area in which Hannah lives and boast about
various commissions and opportunities that come their way. Hannah, despite her success, is once more picking around the edges of serious journalism work. At the end of the evening, Martin tries to draw Hannah out for an inside line on Lenny, who he will be interviewing at a literary festival in a few weeks. Hannah, wanting to impress Martin, tells him everything she knows, which doesn’t amount to much.
The third section follows Richard Spencer as he navigates his public humiliation and estranged wife, and feels sorry for himself about how tough he had it in the 2008 financial crisis. He considers himself a self- made man, coming from a working class background. He married a woman from an established, wealthy family, against her parents’ wishes. He gives an account of his affair with Lenny, how he softened towards her when she had asked him to offer Jake a place to stay.
The final section is Lenny’s – written in first person. She has recently pivoted from the views in her previous articles and book NO MO’ WOKE to a new book, WOKE CAPITALISM: HOW CORPORATIONS SOLD OUT THE WORKING CLASS. That book, fuelled by the publicity around Hannah’s viral article became an instant bestseller. Now Lenny is attending the upmarket Cartmel literary festival. As she is escorted to her event, cutting across a field to reach the main venue where there is a sellout audience, someone jerks at her arm. It’s Jake, looking terrible, clearly desperate. She physically shoves him away, cursing at him.
Shaking off the incident with her troubled son, Lenny prepares to take the stage – her interviewer is Martin, from Hannah’s dinner party. She dominates the conversation from the outset, with Martin getting increasingly flustered, and Lenny increasingly on the attack. Her disgust and disdain for everyone around her slips out. Finally Martin asks her what it is all for – who Lenny is fighting for. Lenny answers with her typical charisma and arrogance: “I’m fighting for you.”