Scan barcode
A review by shimmery
The Promise by Damon Galgut
3.0
The Promise charts several decades in the life of the Swart family, initially wealthy white South Africans with a large farm in Pretoria. The novel opens with the death of the children’s mother, who has her husband promise that he will give Salome, their maid, the house in which she lives.
From before the end of apartheid to years later when wider reparations are being sought across the country, this promise is a tension in the Swart family that surfaces every time there is a death in the family and wealth to be redistributed.
Galgut masterfully shifts the perspective from one character to another, so that the result is a fluid, sweeping novel with the capacity to feel detail oriented even as it plots over many years. While I admired the writing style, perhaps my expectations going into this book were too high and affected my appreciation of it — it won the Booker the same year that A Passage North was shortlisted, a novel which I found transcendent and think about often after I’ve read it. I don’t know that I’ll say the same for The Promise.
From before the end of apartheid to years later when wider reparations are being sought across the country, this promise is a tension in the Swart family that surfaces every time there is a death in the family and wealth to be redistributed.
Galgut masterfully shifts the perspective from one character to another, so that the result is a fluid, sweeping novel with the capacity to feel detail oriented even as it plots over many years. While I admired the writing style, perhaps my expectations going into this book were too high and affected my appreciation of it — it won the Booker the same year that A Passage North was shortlisted, a novel which I found transcendent and think about often after I’ve read it. I don’t know that I’ll say the same for The Promise.