Cleavage by Cleo Watson review: So absurd it could just be true
For anyone already weary from reading about the general election, Cleo Watson’s latest book could be your needed fix. Full of the scandal but free from the stakes, Cleavage is the second Westminster ‘bodice-ripper’ from Boris Johnson’s former aide, and it seems she hasn’t run out of material.
Picking up from Watson’s first novel Whips, Cleavage follows the antics of its three bright yuppie female protagonists (a story-hungry journalist, a nepo baby spad and an earnest political campaigner) during the course of a general election – one which happens to start with a rather large polling gap.
The plot is ridiculous, but intentionally so, and follows the mantra Watson ascribed to her first novel: “the Matt Hancock arse-grab of debut novels, which is to say truly cringeworthy, but nonetheless gripping”.
The story is filled with what may feel like familiar characters (a floppy-haired, TV-loving ex-PM, now living off media appearances and book deals, may strike some), though Watson insists the book is entirely fictitious. “Any similarity with real people or events is coincidental. Honest,” she winks in the author’s note. But you’ll be able to work it out.
Watson rose through politics first working for Theresa May, before becoming an aide to Boris Johnson as a notable close ally of Dominic Cummings. Her role under Boris Johnson, which she described as akin to being his “nanny”, came to a swift close after the ejection of Cummings, with the PM telling Watson she reminded him of an “ugly lamp” left over from a bad marriage.
But Number 10’s loss is fiction’s gain, with Watson’s flair for writing keenly apparent. It’s easy to scoff at this kind of fiction, but writing a bonkbuster is a craft like any other, and Watson has a knack for it. Her fictional campaign strategy for the Tories – in which they map the UK’s porn-watching habits and align their fetishes with policies – is a particular masterstroke, being so absurd you could imagine it might just be true.
Indeed, an episode from Watson’s previous book, in which a fictional MP was found watching porn in parliament, had to be cut from the text after Neil Parish, a real Conservative MP, quit over the same offence. Life mirrors art, after all.
Overall, Cleavage proves just as much of a riot as Whips, and one’s only worry is that Watson may have run out of good titles. A perfect summer read, I recommend one be sent straight to Number 10 for our own Jilly Cooper-loving Prime Minister, who, after all, may be looking for some Californian beach reading.
Cleavage by Cleo Watson is published on 6 June