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Book Reviews Special!
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IMPAC Dublin Literary Award!
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The Known World by
Edward P. Jones: Harper Perennial, London/2004
Available at: Amazon.co.uk
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What
makes The Known World by Edward P. Jones unique is not its treatment of slavery because
this is the aesthetic core of many novels that include Charles Johnson's Middle Passage.
It is not also the physical and psychological trauma of the slavery experience; this also is
effectively interrogated in Toni Morrison's Beloved. And it is not even the profound statement of protest and
resistance that echo in the numerous attempts by the slaves to escape servitude and captivity,
this again is the narrative centre of Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed.
The Known
World is outstanding because it explores these despicable maladies and situates them within
the refreshing and enriching logic of social contradictions of free blacks owning black slaves. The main narrative focus of The Known World is the
suffering and exploitation of a Race, the black Race, and how blacks themselves have
collaborated in this exploitation. It explicates the inhuman act of slavery, the lure of property,
the denial of freedom and the abuse of family values.
Set in a plantation in Manchester County
Virginia owned by Henry Townsend, a free black, the novel opens the very evening Henry died at
the age of 31, leaving for his widow, Caldonia, a vast assets: a large house, an expanse of
farmland and thirty three slaves; 13 women, 11 men and 9 children. And with a narration that is
moving back and forth the plot unfolds to reveal Caldonia's fruitless struggle to stabilise the
chaos and inevitable decline of a fragile and an evil empire.
The reader will understand the passion that drives a widow to
sleep with one of her male slaves, but nothing will prepare him for the devastation that would
follow Caldonia's action. What should have passed for a one-night-stand between Caldonia and
Moses gradually builds into nights of frequent orgies. Moses, an overseer, who is happily
married to Priscilla with a twelve-year-old son, Jamie, now begins to dream of being freed soon
and married to Caldonia.
It is his thinking that in such Utopian world there is no space to accommodate a slave wife and slave son, and so he decides to make an alternative
arrangement for them. Wielding his power as an overseer, Moses tells Alice, one of Caldonia's
slaves, known to be of an unsound mind, that he has set her free. He then convinces her to take
his wife and son along with her. It is their successful escape from Henry's plantation that fractures the fragile
world of the Manchester County Virginia and set The Known World towards the inevitable
journey of affirmation and communal positive identity that emerge at the end.
The Known World is not a story about an individual: It
actually lacks a central character, but flagellates between characters; from Henry to Moses,
from Robbins to Caldonia, and from Counsel to Skiffington. And its world is inhumane and callous:
free slaves like Augustus, Willis and Selby can be sold back into slavery because, as Robbins
William points out to his black slave wife, Philomena Cartwright, "paper meant nothing", an
ironic truth that is practically demonstrated when Harvey Travis chews and swallows Augustus'
paper. It is an inhumane and callous world that a Bristol white woman is flogged for fornication, but her black accomplice receives a
capital punishment; that escape is perceived as a more heinous crime than rape because "a run-away was, in fact,
a thief since he had stolen his master's property--himself" and the penalty ranges from slicing
of ear to cutting of Achilles tendon. (Bleeding is stopped with a pepper poultice.)
The most dramatic moment in the novel is the confrontation
between Augustus and his son, Henry, narrated in flashback. Augustus philosophy of life is expounded in Mildred parable thus: "Don't go back
to Egypt after God done took you outa there," Egypt being a metaphor for oppression. But
Henry sees in Egypt a place of abundance and a symbol of power. On that evening in the fall,
Augustus whips Henry across the shoulder with a stick, and says with a sardonic tone,
"Thas just how every slave every day be feelin." Henry in turn forces the stick from his father,
bricks it over his knees and responds, "Thas how a master feels." Ironically, Augustus Townsend,
who had long bought his freedom, had also bought Henry's.
Though that singular Father-Son confrontation is the novel's
defining moment, it is not its narrative Centre. The Centre of The
Known World is located in a map. The Map motif is the thematic and structural device
in the novel. There are three maps in The Known World and are all symbolic. One is
"a browned and yellowed woodcut of some eight feet by six feet" map on wall of Skiffington
office with the heading "The Known World". Skiffington has actually bought it from a
Russian as a present for his wife, Winifred, but she has rejected it on the grounds that it is
"too heinous to be in her house", evoking a horrofic image of evil, of death, of denial that
the map symbolises. Even Jean Broussard, a French-American facing murder charges, will later dismiss
it as "a map of yesterday" and offer to get Skiffington a "better map, and a map of today."
The other two maps are the "grand piece of art," hanging "silent
and yet songful" on the wall in the dinning room of the Hotel on C Street in the City of
Washington, each titled "Alice Night". One is a map of County of Manchester, Virginia; the other
is the map of the Plantation-Community of Henry Townsend. They are both made of the same
material: "part tapestry, part panting, and part clay structure". Alice
Night is the image of triumph of the human spirit against evil. It embodies the vision of the
metaphysical man, free from his shackles.
It is instructive that the faces of the people in the map are
raised up, "as though to look in the very eyes of
God." It is equally instructive that the owners and proprietors of the Hotel are Alice,
Priscilla and other runaways. But far more instructive is that in this eternal creation
there is no place for a slave cemetery; it "is just plain ground now, grass and nothing else.
It is empty, even of the tiniest infants, who rest alive and well in their mother's arms." Alice
Night is the very symbol of life, of rebirth, of regeneration, of affirmation and communal
positive identity, which The Known World affirms.
Reviewed by Peter Anny-Nzekwue
Gardening At Night by Diane Awerbuck: Vintage, London/2004
Available at: Amazon.co.uk
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Gardening at night is Diane Awerbuck's
 excellent first novel. It is a coming of age story of a young girl
growing up in Kimberly, South Africa. It is autobiographical and Awerbuck calls it her pseudo
child.
The book is funny, tragic and deeply
emotional. The story revolves around hurtful unhappy relationships. It makes one laugh and want
to cry. It is not a book about racism but it does linger in the background.
Diane is a small child devastated by the loss of her father,
stricken by the defection of her newly married mother, coping with a stepfather whom she
secretly hates. A child who cannot comprehend the changes in her life. A child that grows in
her own unique environment to become strong and whole again.
The novel is written in an unusual style and is rich with
imagery. For example "the carpet is sticky and thick, a pattern of leaves in autumn colours
that makes us feel like we are always falling down as we try cross it, swallowing our ankles
without a sound as we pull against them." The music of her adolescence and young womanhood is
referred to throughout the novel. Awerbuck in an interview says, "music connects us with
something beyond our immediate context especially when we are young and we do not understand
how people survive the banal lives when there is so much to see. We don't understand the
miraculous nature of the simple, of the everyday."
Awerbuck has a quirky droll sense of humour. Her chapter
heading are very witty and also very apt. The intensity of her relationship with her mother
is all too evident. She is mentioned often, sometimes critically but always with love. The
sexual relationships described in the book are mostly unhappy and painful experiences. She
goes from one relationship to another eventually becoming pregnant. This pregnancy results
in a traumatic abortion, the chapter called "Tadpole" gives a very poignant description of
the hours before the abortion.
The works of other authors and poets are referred to continually
throughout the novel. They are used as a comparison for her own thoughts and feelings. For
example when her mother calls her father evil, "I go out because it is true, there is a fire
in my head, but not in the Hazelwood because there is none in Kimberly" 'I went into the
Hazelwood because a fire was in my head' W.B Yeats ("The Song of the Wandering Angus").
Enid Blytons perfect upper class family in the famous five
children's books is used as a contrast to her own upbringing. Blytons writes, 'An enormous ham
pink and gleaming is set in the centre of the table which groaned under its weight'; Diane
writes, "my stomach groans, but not under the weight of anything" Diane remarks also that "the
famous five don't do funerals"
The novel is full of references to legends, myths and fairytales,
the stories that occupy the mind of a lonely child. Awerbuck's South Africa is not a country
the world is comfortable with; we associate it with white supremacy, racism and apartheid. But
then Gardening at Night is a novel about a generation that is slowly recovering and
starting over.
This is a wonderful poignant and moving novel.
One wonders how she could ever recover from the tragedy in her life, such as the deaths of her
father, brother and some of her friends. Diane Awerbuck richly a IMPAC shortlist for this
book and I am looking forward to reading her future novels.
Reviewed by Brenda Sharpe
The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut:
Atlantic Books, London/2003
Available at: Amazon.co.uk
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The Good Doctor is a great novel
that is set in the former homelands region of South Africa. At the centre of the novel is a
rundown, under-utilized hospital, where Dr Frank Eloff has been living for 6 to7 years. He is
disillusioned and defeated.
He is separated from his wife and waiting on promotion as head
of the hospital. There are 7 people left working there. Dr Ngema, his boss, who is also waiting
on her next appointment. She states that "I support change and innovation"--which is the mantra
of the new South African government--when, in fact, she is afraid of any change.
Dr Frank Waters arrives at the hospital. He is young and
idealistic. Recently qualified, now "he wants to make a difference". A friendship develops
between them. "Like two strands of rope we were twined together in a tension that united us. We were
different to each other, though it was our nature to be joined and woven this way. As for the
points we were spanned between a rope doesn't know what its own purpose is".
Thego, a native black nurse, has also lived and worked at the
hospital since he was left orphaned by the war .He was sullen and sour, continually drawn in
on some dark core in himself. He is stealing equipment from the hospital and Frank suspects he
is involved in subterfuge activities with the army.
The Santanders, a Cuban couple of doctors, share the room beside
Frank and Laurence. Their relationship is strained since Frank had a brief affair with Claudia.
Wanting to make a difference they came to Soweto initially, "but they couldn't handle the cases
that came in all the time; the violence, the extremity of it. Something in this country had gone
to far, something had snapped .it was like a fury so strong that it had come loose from its
moorings".
One day Franks runs into Colonel Moeller, his old army boss. He
has unpleasant memories of his last encounter with him. When he was called to make a judgement
as to how much more torture a prisoner could take. "It was as if somebody had pushed a finger
through a weak place in the fabric of my past and was looking in through the hole. I had found
my grand defining moment says frank and what it revealed I didn't want to know".
Laurence decides to set up an outpatients clinic at a nearby
village Dr Ngema is not too happy about this. Laurence's enthusiasm however persuades everyone
except Frank to help. It would be a way of drawing attention to the hospital, of making people
aware that were here, and of actually doing something. But it transpires that Laurence is more
in love with his own idealism than with the people themselves.
One night, when Frank is looking after Laurence's girlfriend they
go on a sightseeing trip and run into the Brigadier. He is cutting the grass at night in his
former mansion. He was a powerful member of the last government, now he is redundant and
homeless, back sleeping in a tent.
Maria, a native who runs a gift shop near the hospital, has been
sleeping with Frank for two years. Initially no money changes hands and very little conversation.
This arrangement suits both of them. When Maria comes to Laurence's clinic pregnant, Frank allows him
to perform an abortion. He regrets his apathy afterwards: "The anguish that rolled down then was
like the first feeling ever to touch me its rawness its power was almost like love".
In the end Frank redeems himself by facing his fears, offering his
life for his friend, Laurence, and confronting his old enemy, Colonel Moeller. He faces the
future optimistically. It turns out that he is the good doctor, caring and dedicated.
The style of writing in this novel is beautiful with some very
powerful descriptive passages. It is well paced with many layers. The plot is thick and dense,
and the characters are believable. All the above ingredients combine to make this a very
enjoyable novel.
It paints a picture of what life is like in South Africa today.
It gives an understanding of their political past and the difficulties there, how the people
are trying to overcome the violence, corruption and inertia. It leaves you with a curiosity to
learn more.
Reviewed by Pauline Ahearne.
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2005 the Dublin Quarterly--to see familiar things with unfamiliar eyes!
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