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.