by Vicky, Laura, and Britt
We had an overwhelmingly positive response to this month’s book, The Promise by Damon Galgut, with many readers saying that they were engaged and incredibly moved by the book from start to finish. For the most part, readers loved the unique “movie camera” narrative style of the novel and found that this bird’s eye view allowed the reader to gain a more complete picture as the story moved forward. Though it took some readers a little while to get into the flow of the novel, they were intrigued by the narrative shifts and found it compelling to read. Galgut’s use of language, his mastery of metaphor, dark humour and sense of the absurd made this deeply sad and layered story a joy to read for may of our book clubbers.
However, the book was not without its critics, and some bookclubbers loathed the chopping and changing narrative voice, the multiple perspectives, and most especially, the lack of punctuation. They found the story a chore to follow, the subject matter bleak and lacking in hope, and the characters unlikable and unrelatable. Some readers felt that this book was quite inaccessible to the reader who was not prepared to research and dig around into the ugly history of the race divide in South Africa.
Others who liked the book admitted that their appreciation was a rather intellectual one in that they could see the writing was brilliant and unique and that the story line was important but that it failed to engage them on an emotional level. We talked about Prize winners - particularly Booker Prize winners - and what expectations we brought to a book that had won one. For some it lowered expectations since they often disliked the books chosen and for others it made them persist with a book and look for brilliance that was not immediately apparent to them.
We spoke about our limited experience in reading novels from South Africa. Apart from a few authors, Including J.M Coetzee, Bryce Courtney, Wilbur Smith and Alan Paton, most readers had not read South African literature widely. We discussed Galgut’s claim that South African writers are almost always expected to place their novels against the changing backdrop of South African politics, and thought he had managed this quite cleverly by using the Swart family’s troubles as an allegory for what was happening in the country.
The structure of the book around the four funerals of four different religious denominations was a clever device and showed that divisions were not just between blacks and whites. To readdress their moral failings, the characters sought absolution or relief in religion. Most of the characters had a connection to a faith-based community, all of them non-African religions. The author has a lot to say about religion and the blind following of various faiths, and each of the spiritual leaders depicted appeared either corrupt or comical.
Overall, The Promise was well received by our Riverbend Readers!