Sat 03 Mar 2007Ticking the boxes on the Blair yearsFiction:It is inevitable that as Tony Blair makes
his escape at some point over the next few months, we will have to
endure quite a lot of looking back at the last decade - that
putatively coherent block of contemporary British history to be
known, probably, as The Blair Years.Blake Morrison's new novel opens on the day after Blair's 1997
election victory, clearly staking out this ground. It ends in 2002,
at a party to mark five years of New Labour. But this is not a
political novel in any real sense. Which of course is fine - but it
does rather leave you wondering why it sets its frame of reference
so specifically.