A review by Teresa White
“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
—The Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:9-13, KJV
This is Lauren’s third novel, and it undoubtedly reaffirms her as a very good writer. As my father would say: we already knew that.
The essence remains consistent with her previous work, though the subject matter differs significantly, as it continues to explore historical state-sanctioned and race-determined inequalities and injustice. The subject matter differs as she traverses both the Americas and Africa, specifically that “monster in the south” (to quote Latin Quarter’s 1980s hit, Radio Africa).
The essence remains consistent with her previous work,
Our heroine, Prudence Wright (is her name apposite or ironic?), is an academically gifted and ambitious African-American born of Trinidadian parents. She is smart, glamorous and affluent. She and her husband are a Washington power couple, though her husband, Davis, comes from a different background. He is comfortably middle-class African-American from the Midwest.
Our heroine’s father, previously a school teacher, was brutally murdered, and her mother suffered a nervous breakdown. Without a wider family support system, Prudence knew insecurity and living rough—an exposure that belies her Harvard education and her polished confidence.
It is into this world that a previous acquaintance enters: Matshediso. He is an IT wizard from South Africa, recently recruited by Davis’s firm. They meet at an elegant restaurant where the couple are well known. Prudence studiously leaves her previous relationship with Matshediso unacknowledged.
They had previously met when, as a young law student at Harvard, she documented some of the hearings from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).”
Their fates coalesce around an African sociopath who testifies in camera. Prudence overhears his testimony by accident. He has the blood of many activists on his hands, using the trust engendered by his blackness in a racially segregated fascist state. Many of his victims are school-aged children.
Intrigues and about-turns
Flash forward to the present: a series of mishaps occur in the restaurant. The reader is reminded that, though apartheid South Africa seems an anachronistic outlier from the last century, false accusations and racism are alive and well in Washington, DC, the so-called capital of global democracy.
From this point onwards, a series of intrigues and about-turns happen. The book is suspenseful. I do not propose to share any more plot elements with you for fear of spoiling Lauren’s many reveals. I shall talk about themes instead.
I first wish to consider truth and the possibility of forgiveness as the route to healing in a monstrous state where humans are the direct agents of that monstrosity.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the conductor of the TRC process. Emerging from a fractured nation scarred by recent atrocities, the TRC made excellent sense as a basis for moving forward politically. I always viewed Tutu’s morality as an Anglican morality, or at least the ideals that this tradition within Christianity presents: an unflinching Protestantism with the more moderate softening of redemption once all the acts of contrition have been observed, notably in terms of truth-telling.
Now, no doubt Tutu’s Anglicanism played a role in framing his worldview. However, I have since learnt that he was more directly guided by the concept of Ubuntu. This is an indigenous southern African ideal of our spiritual connectedness as a human family, that we make one another human by how we act together. It is sometimes translated as “I am because we are” or “I am because you are.” Though it is more reflected in Jamaica’s “Out of Many, One People” than our “Together We Aspire, Together We Achieve,” Tutu did call T&T “The Rainbow Nation” long before he could bestow that epithet upon his own homeland.
Having said that, I remember growing up in 1970s Trinidad as a very blonde little girl with the surname White and being teased mercilessly (and often unkindly) for it. I, therefore, believe wholeheartedly that a nation must confront its past honestly for its people to heal and thrive. People who have been harmed deserve acknowledgment, not denial, and to determine for themselves whether they, as individuals, are ready to move forward.
Normalised lies
In our world of normalised lies, dishonestly packaged as “post-truth”, I have a great deal to say about what truth is. And what it is not.
Truth must correspond with the observable and, ideally, verifiable facts of the world as experienced by people. Descriptions must be accurate and consistent with the actual state of affairs. Where they are not, there is falsity. Truth is basic. Life, in all its aspects of work, play, friendship and family, is simply unsatisfactory without it.
It is in this very notion of truth—however inconvenient, unpleasant or nuanced—where we see the moral superiority of Lauren’s writing. Her characters across her novels are imperfect. They are sometimes marred by an ostensible false consciousness. However, upon deeper reflection, the actions stemming from this consciousness make practical sense. Operating at the micro level, we realise that their actions are not class betrayals. They are acts of individuals with less social power simply trying to thrive. These acts are very human.
In our increasingly divided communities, writers interested in reparative social justice may be afraid to show their victimised protagonists as anything other than morally unimpeachable.
Lauren does not fall into this seductive trap. She deals in complexity and subtlety when the rest of our world is calling for a “dumbing down” of social strife and conflict. Serious social issues cannot be honestly reduced to glib soundbites. Not, that is, if we are seeking profound and sustained progress.
Then there is the question of justice. When reading the novel, and without giving too much away, I was consistently plagued by the old Trini wisdom of “Doh drink bush tea for someone else fever.” This is something my old team member, Kashta Ome’s granny used to say, and it became our team mantra (we all still say it even though a few of us have moved on). So much so that I bought a small sign a few Bocas Lit Festivals ago with these sage words painted by the Sign Man himself, Bruce Cayonne. It has pride of place in my home office.
Who am I to pronounce?
These things are never straightforward.
I am again reminded (as sadly, I have so often been in the recent past) of WB Yeats’s “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”
This is not the book or the writer for you if you are looking for a neat little package of justice versus injustice as prevailed over by flat heroic victims.
However, it is your book if you are interested in the moral uncertainties of imperfect people of action, seeking their own salvations, confronting intractabilities that they cannot accept. There is a great deal of pith and bite for that thoughtful reader. And did I mention: plot twists, reveals, surprises, and suspense? It is, indeed, so exciting.
