Most of us liked this book and found it an easy read but were surprised that it won the Booker Prize. Despite this, we all had a lot to say about it!
The Promise is a short book that tells the story of a white family across 40 years in a quartet of places, times and seasons in the last days of the apartheid regime in South Africa and the early years and present day of the new republic. Spring of 1986, Winter of 1995 (world cup), Autumn of 2004 (Aids crisis), Summer of 2018 (resignation of Zuma) which is reflected in one of the characters, Anton’s unfinished novel.
For most of us, the book grew on us. Some struggled with the style which was jarring switching between tenses, time and characters like a stream of consciousness commentary. It seemed very much written for a South African audience with a few in jokes and references to stuff that one either just took as read or one had to do a bit of research.
Often it is unclear who the unnamed narrator is. Is he part of the story? But some liked the fact that the narrator often makes quips to the person to whom they are addressing the story and even makes judgements on what they are thinking sometimes accepting that they are racially biased. Mark found it cleverly written, and funny in places, and easy and a pleasure to read. Steve was even more positive: it was beautifully written - unassuming and direct, yet full of vivid imagery and breathtaking situations that just leap out right in front of you, like Astrid’s final encounter. It was also very funny in places.
The thing that Steve took away most strongly is the way the style deceives the reader into thinking this is just a simple story about a family changing over the generations. But gradually you realise how big the issues are. How Amor devotes her life to caring for Aids victims as the disease takes hold in South Africa and continues to fight for Salome’s promised bequest all through the book. At the same time Anton is gradually losing it, morphing from lovable but reckless prodigal to sad waste of space, but intelligent enough to know it. And the farm becomes a metaphor for the decline of white South Africa.
We liked the way it started with Amor, and ended with her as well, the surviving sibling, bracketed by her first period at her mother’s funeral and the “drying of her channels” at the end. Perhaps the promise of the book is that of the rainbow nation and how it has not been realised. Has Galgut intentionally linked the story of the new nation to the arc of one woman’s fertility, starting with huge potential and then petering out.
All the family members except Amor are part of racist and white supremacist culture of the dominant Afrikaners. There is some excellent writing that expresses the emotions, thoughts and hang ups of each family member and the fractious relationships between them all. Each character is drawn with its own idiosyncrasies and madness. Andrew highlighted nice descriptions of people at night trying to sleep and people’s internal dialogues intertwined with dialogue. Richard highlighted Galgut’s very good treatment of the shock of bereavement.
Mark W noted that religion takes a bit of a battering as well. All religions are treated with the same degree of disdain, from Dutch Reformed to Roman Catholic. The theme (and hypocrisy) of religion crops up throughout the novel at each burial and shows the Pastor progressively developing his own private offshoot of the South African Anglican church to which the father becomes completely taken in. And Astrid justifies her adulterous lifestyle by turning to Catholicism which relieves her of the guilt of her sins.
We appreciated how the book portrayed recent history in South Africa. Mark T: The sense of South Africa was good, the ending of white rule and the birth of the new country and the decay, violence and fear were well described. The closed minds of the Manie and Astrid and others contrasted with the vision of Mandela and Tutu who realised that replacing one tyranny with another was not the way forward.
Each of the family members are on the brink of madness, even Amor whom the others all think is the strange one. Just as their society is on the brink of massive change, their source of income is drying up and their right to live on the land is challenged. A story of disintegration only slightly redeemed by Amor’s very belated gift to Salome which also frees her from her history, the promise finally kept. As each of the main family members dies, each has reached a point of disintegration from cancer, from grief, from an ordered society, from hopelessness. Only Amor in her limited but compassionate life as a nurse, leaves the family, the farm and can see a future.
None of the characters are likable and none except, Amor have any redeeming features. This includes the minor characters showing for example a corrupt religion led by the domninee. Was this to emphasise the bankruptcy of the white society? Only the excellent descriptions of people, places, relationships and mental commentary prevents the book form becoming a depressing dirge. Perhaps, deliberately too we only get small snippets of what the black characters in the novel are thinking from Salome to Lukas to Lexington. Why make most of the black characters so negative too?
Richard: One of my problems was that this was such an odd family – although the initial description of the parents made them seem relatively ‘normal’ (although with all the stress of marrying across different cultures and religions), what emerges is that all the children are really odd, and the ways that everyone communicates (or not) are equally odd.
Richard: One of his recurrent themes was death – not only and obviously that each section revolved around a key death in the family, but his descriptions of death, and the process of bodily deterioration after death.
Richard: There was a lot of mystical material and/or magical thinking in the book, and I did not understand the place of it in this book. Richard: often I did not know where the book was going or what its point was.
Andrew: In the end, I’m left with a slightly deeper understanding of South Africa, some forgettable characters, and disappointment that the style celebrated by the Booker judges detracted from the story. A bitty, scratchy book, but with layers and weaves of powerful imagery about the promise of the rainbow nation and with bursts of power and beautiful prose.
Chris W found it a very thought-provoking book and one which he would like to read again.
Steve: It’s an interesting book that, for all its darkness and death, ends on a positive note - the final sentence I found particularly effective, as Amor leaves the farm for the last time. That felt like moving on at last from the mess created and complicated by her family. But so tragic that while the promise is finally fulfilled, the reception she gets from Salome’s family is suspicious and bitter - lives wrecked and potential wasted.
Scores
Steve 7.5
Mark T 7.75
Andrew 7.5
Chris w 7.75
Mark 7
Chris B 7
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