The Armstrong Trilogy : From the Heat of Day, One Generation, Genetha

The Armstrong Trilogy collects in one volume, for the first time and as the author intended, three novels of acknowledged brilliance. Set in Georgetown, Cuyana, it chronicles the events within the Armstrong family and in the world at large that determine each individual's destiny. The story begins in "From the Heat of the Day" with the marriage of Sonny and Gladys Armstrong, and then follows the Armstrong children - the son, Rohan, in "One Generation," and the daughter in "Genetha" - as each tries to escape the family legacy of sadness and doom. Intense and moving, this remarkable saga is the work of a consummate storyteller in full command of his powers.

Guyanese novelist Heath's Armstrong family trilogy-- From the Heat of the Day , One Generation and Genetha --are united in one volume.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A spare, bleak saga of two generations in the life of a Guyanese family struggling for respectability but unable to snatch any but the most fleeting moments of happiness. In the Heat of the Day (1993), the first of the novels and the only one previously published in the US, traces the declining fortunes of Sonny Armstrong and his wife, Gladys, as their quarrels with relatives, servants, and each other leave them sunk in a domestic hell worthy of a household Dante. One Generation follows their son Rohan, whose secure position in the civil service offers a promise of rescue from his parents' misery, but whose love for Indrani Mohammed, intensified by his fearful desire for his older sister Genetha, leads him to follow Indrani to a backwater village where he falls in love with Indrani's younger sister Dada even as Indrani's husband's family determines to get rid of him. Following Rohan's death--a mystery the police never solve--the focus shifts, in Genetha, to the last of the Armstrongs, who finds that every choice open to her--the genteel suitor Michael or her brother's forbidden friend Fingers, life with the domineering aunts her father had antagonized or in the brothel run by the former servant he had slept with--is equally poisoned. Genetha's one idyllic episode--a trip to Morawhanna with Fingers and her neighbor Ulric- -ends when she discovers on her return that Fingers has sold her house out from under her. ``The individual is nothing. The family's everything,'' concludes Genetha's aunt Deborah, whose own thirst for retribution explains why her remark is such an ironically apt epigraph for the whole trilogy. Like the early D.H. Lawrence, Heath endows the familiar trials of this family with an elemental power, as if each were happening for the first time. The result is harrowing in its simplicity and cumulative force. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Heat of the Day ( LJ 12/92), the first novel of this Guyanese family saga, opens in 1922 with the ill-fated marriage of well-heeled Gladys to Sonny, a civil servant in the post office. Colonial class consciousness and the disapproval of her family undermine Gladys's happiness and lead Sonny to alcoholism and philandering. Their son Rohan's story forms the moving center novel, One Generation . A good student with a promising future, Rohan falls in love with the married daughter of an East Indian co-worker and ends up in a tragic romantic entanglement. The final story belongs to the daughter, the eponymous Genetha. It chronicles her unhappy slide from comfortable beginnings to poverty and prostitution. Short chapters filled with punchy dialog move the trilogy along at a spritely pace. This view into the rich cultural and political life of Guyana may finally alter the indelible impression left by Jonestown. Recommended for larger collections.
- Barbara Love, St. Lawrence Coll., Kingston, Ontario
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.