By Ong Chin Huat

With the publication of his final novel coinciding with his death, Jeffrey Archer leaves behind an extraordinary career that spanned five decades, numerous controversies and more than 300 million books sold worldwide.

When an advance copy of Jeffrey Archer’s Adam & Eve arrived from Times Distribution, something in the accompanying blurb caught my attention. Archer had announced that this would be his final novel. Having followed his books for years, I found the declaration unusually definitive. I was curious enough to Google his age. He was 86.

I looked forward to the novel’s publication on 6 October, particularly to reading what the critics would make of his last offering. Then, on 5 October, I came across the news of his death on Instagram. I was stunned. Archer, a man whose fiction had so often dealt in extraordinary turns of fortune, had died just one day before his final book reached the shelves.

His own life certainly contained enough material for several novels. There were the political ambitions, the considerable wealth, the celebrated parties, the scandals and, most notoriously, a prison sentence. Archer enjoyed remarkable success and endured equally public humiliations, often returning to the headlines when one might reasonably have expected him to retreat from view.

Born in 1940, he entered Parliament in 1969 at just 29, representing the Conservatives. A disastrous investment left him heavily in debt and brought his parliamentary career to an abrupt halt in 1974. Writing, initially undertaken as a means of recovering his finances, proved to be his salvation.

His first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, appeared in 1976. Three years later came Kane and Abel, the sprawling tale of two men born on the same day into vastly different circumstances. One was the privileged heir to a banking fortune; the other, a Polish immigrant determined to make his own. Their parallel lives, shaped by ambition, rivalry and chance, captivated readers around the world.

It was the book that made Archer an international literary celebrity. Further bestsellers followed, among them The Prodigal Daughter, A Matter of Honour and, decades later, the seven-volume Clifton Chronicles. By the end of his career, his books had sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, a figure that few novelists can contemplate, let alone attain.

His achievements were all the more remarkable given the turbulent course of his public life. A return to political prominence eventually brought him a peerage, but his conviction for perjury in 2001 and subsequent imprisonment ensured that controversy would remain part of his story. Even prison became material for another publishing success: the three-volume A Prison Diary.

Yet while the newspapers chronicled his latest misfortunes, his readers continued buying his books.

Archer belonged unapologetically to the tradition of popular storytelling. He was never particularly concerned with the stylistic experimentation or introspection associated with highbrow literary fiction. He understood his audience and knew how to hold its attention. His plots moved briskly, his prose was direct, and he had an instinct for ending a chapter at precisely the moment when the reader wanted to know more.

Having read Archer over the years, I have always admired how easily he draws one into a story. There is little that is laboured or self-conscious about his writing. The sentences are clear, the narrative flows, and before long one has read considerably more than intended. It is a talent that sounds deceptively simple until one attempts to do it oneself.

He was also an astute observer of English society, particularly the conventions of an earlier age. The distinctions between aristocracy and working class, the expectations of family, the importance of inheritance and social standing, even the manners governing everyday encounters, were woven naturally into his narratives. For readers outside Britain, these details offered an accessible introduction to a society whose customs might otherwise seem remote.

That quality is apparent in Adam & Eve. The novel opens on Armistice Day in November 1918, when two children are born hours apart into very different worlds. Eve is the daughter of an earl; Adam, the son of a shepherd. Their lives unfold against the changing social landscape of England and the approach of another world war.

In the opening chapters, Archer is particularly good at establishing a sense of place. His descriptions of country houses, village pubs and the routines of daily life have an easy familiarity, while the language and attitudes reflect the period. One need not be steeped in English history to understand the world he depicts. He makes it readily comprehensible without interrupting the story to explain every social convention.

There is a tendency in some literary circles to regard commercial fiction as a lesser achievement, as though popularity somehow diminishes artistic worth. Archer’s career offers a useful counterargument. His ambition was to entertain, and he pursued it with extraordinary consistency. Readers returned because they trusted him to tell a story worth following.

This did not make him immune to criticism, any more than his phenomenal sales absolved him of the controversies surrounding his life. But it would be difficult to deny his influence on popular fiction or the pleasure his books have given to generations of readers.

There is a poignant symmetry in the titles of the novels that bookend his greatest success. Kane and Abel established his reputation in 1979; Adam & Eve, published almost half a century later, returns to the idea of two lives divided by birth and circumstance. Archer had intended it to be his farewell to fiction. That it appeared the day after his death gives the book a significance he could scarcely have anticipated.

Jeffrey Archer never needed to be a literary purist to be an accomplished novelist. His particular gift was the ability to tell a story with such apparent ease that the reader scarcely noticed the craft involved. It brought him fame, fortune and a worldwide audience.

For those of us who have enjoyed his novels over the decades, the pleasure of his storytelling will remain his most enduring literary legacy.

Image Credit – @abooknerd.reads on Instagram.