The Promise

Starred review from May 1, 2021
Award-winning South African author Galgut's (Arctic Summer, 2014) compelling new novel blends characters and history and intricate themes to reveal the devastating impacts of white privilege and institutional racism. Focused on a white, Afrikaans South African family and launched in the 1980s during the waning years of the apartheid regime, it begins with a chapter titled ""Ma."" Amor, at the transformational age of 13, remembers overhearing her recently deceased mother on her deathbed, asking that her husband (Amor's father) promise to give a cottage on their farm to Salome, the family's Black helper. He agrees, but does not act. The unfulfilled promise drives the next three chapters, also named for family members--""Pa,"" ""Astrid,"" and ""Anton""--that take place over several ensuing decades. Through internal and external struggles, Amor dwells on the promise. Amid sweeping changes in the country, deaths in the family, and her own quiet yet sustained rebelliousness and journey of self-discovery, Amor realizes that, in contrast to her siblings, she, like her country, has changed. But when the haunting, elusive promise, years later, is finally possible, has it soured? Is the promise a stained artifact rooted in white guilt or a gift that transcends? Will Amor follow through? Lyrical, brimming with situational irony and character contrast, The Promise is timely, relevant, and thematically significant.

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Starred review from March 15, 2021
Three decades of South African sociopolitical history are woven into a saga of loss and missed opportunity that upends a dysfunctional Afrikaner family living outside Pretoria. Rachel Swart has just died of cancer. Her husband, Manie, and three children, Anton, Astrid, and Amor, are all walloped by different incarnations of grief. Only Amor, the youngest daughter, cares about her mother's dying wish--that Salome, the Swarts' domestic servant, receive full ownership of the house where she lives with her family, though under apartheid law, Black people are not legally allowed to own property in White areas. Nobody else pays any mind: Amor is 13 years old at the start and functionally voiceless in her family. The promise is buried along with Rachel, only to be unearthed years later when subsequent family deaths force the Swarts to recollide for the rituals of mourning. Galgut moves fluidly among accounts of every single major and minor character, his prose unbroken by quotation marks or italics, as though narrated from the perspective of a ghost who briefly possesses every person. The language is peppered with regional geography, terminology, and slang, with sentences ranging from clipped ("One day, she says aloud. One day I'll. But the thought breaks off midway...") to lyrical ("There's a snory sound of bees, jacaranda blossoms pop absurdly underfoot") to metafictional ("No need to dwell on how she washes away her tears"). Galgut's multifarious writing style is bold and unusual, providing an initial barrier to entry yet achieving an intuitive logic over time. "How did it become so complicated?" Amor wonders at one point. "Home used to mean only one Thing, not a blizzard of things at war." Galgut extends his extraordinary corpus with a rich story of family, history, and grief.

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