A Perfect Pledge: A Novel - Hardcover

Maharaj, Rabindranath

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374230706 ISBN 13: 9780374230708

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

Synopsis

It is 1961 and Trinidad, at once a lush island paradise and a poverty-stricken hole, is inching toward independence. Narpat, a sugar cane farmer, finds himself caught at the crossroads of a changing world. He is a hard-working man of modest means, and is sickened by the corruption and materialism running rampant on the island. He thinks his neighbors are greedy, shiftless, and enslaved to the rumshop. But Narpat is different. He contrasts the helplessness of the islanders with the resourcefulness of his ancient Aryans, and through a series of stringent moral codes and dietary injunctions, sets about to create order within his family and the village. His rules impose a great deal of deprivation on his wife and four children, and his wife must wage her own battle against her husband's ensuing neglect. Then Narpat decides to single-handedly build a factory to prevent the loss of his livelihood. Narpat's youngest son Jeeves watches his father's obsession with the factory, watches his mother's health decline, and watches as she dies. Unable to prevent his mother's death, he tries to redeem his father by constantly reminding him of the fables the older man told to his young children. And these fables with their undertones of pledges and duty steel the son for a terrible sacrifice.

In A Perfect Pledge, Maharaj combines a Dickensian rendering of the effects of poverty, caste, envy, superstition,corruption and bigotry with vivid, complex characters and gorgeous writing, in a novel that celebrates both the resilience of the human spirit and the heartbreak of failed dreams.

About this title

About the Author

Rabindranath Maharaj is the author of two novels, Lagahoo's Apprentice and Homer in Flight, and two short story collections, The Interloper and The Book of Ifs and Buts. He was born in Trinidad and now lives in Ajax, Ontario.

Reviews

Narpat is his Trinidadian village's scolding iconoclast and most vocal critic—a sort of King Lear of the sugarcane fields. He scorns his neighbors for their rum drinking, laziness, bad diet and use of electricity. Year upon year, his overworked wife, three daughters and one son, Jeeves, form a captive audience in this bittersweet and affectionate portrait spanning two decades. Age 55 by the time Jeeves is born in 1961 (a year before Trinidad's independence), within a few years Narpat runs for county councilor on a "futurist" platform and a promise to settle his fellow farmers' dispute with the local landowner. Meanwhile, Jeeves attends school, where variously incompetent and abusive teachers drone in stark contrast to Narpat and his practical autodidact's wisdom. As Jeeves watches his father's influence radiate beyond the family's ramshackle house, he has to decide how he will orient himself to his father's life and leanings. Born in Trinidad, Maharaj has published two previous novels in Canada, where he lives; this is his U.S. debut. Comparison to V.S. Naipaul's Indian-Trinidadian oedipal fiction will be inevitable, and Maharaj lacks Naipaul's acidic bite—probably intentionally. But he does have Naipaul's sense of grand scale in a small place, one that comes through on every page.
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Born in Trinidad, Maharaj portrays the life of one family living in Lengua, a "small, impoverished cane-farming village," in the years leading up to Trinidad's independence. Lengua is isolated and bereft of government-sponsored amenities, and most of the villagers have adopted a "comforting fatalism" about their lot in life. But not Narpat, the family's patriarch, who disparages those who have left their land for the cities, or turned to the rum shops for solace. Narpat raises his and his wife Dulari's four children according to a strict and unbending moral code--no Santa Claus, no school bazaars, no sweets or unnecessary school supplies, no frivolous clothing--and teaches them that "you must fight hard for everything you want." When Narpat runs for county councillor in the 1962 elections, his campaign promise is "to wipe out prejudice, superstition, laziness, jealousy, and . . . gossip." He wins, and in later years sees his children succeed, but the price of the loss of their love is too high. Maharaj's insightful saga ponders what Narpat gave up to maintain his high moral code. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374230706
• ISBN 13: 9780374230708
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416