The Turning over - Hardcover

McCauley, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1579620124 ISBN 13: 9781579620127

Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co, 1998

Synopsis

For several years Robert Kelley lived a primitive and contented life in a fishing village in the mangrove swamps of Sierra Leone. There he developed and managed a project that built a cooperative fisheries station to support remote coastal villages. His development work done, he reluctantly turns the station over to the corrupt government Fisheries Division, whom he knows from experience will simply steal its resources and go away, leaving the villagers poorer than ever. He travels to Freetown, the capital, to present his last report to his employer, an English development agency, and leave Sierra Leone for Mali to join Marie, with whom he's had an intermittent and intense love affair. But when he arrives in Freetown his superior offers him another position, establishing and managing a new project in the heart of a politically unstable region of the country. Robert hesitates to accept, for he has already committed himself to joining Marie. His decision embroils him in unexpected and violent consequences. This love story of two expatriates is set against a lushly pictured West Africa in which the echoes of colonial, and even pre-colonial, life are still evident in the corrupting power of the Big Man and the equally corrupting privilege that surrounds white expatriate life. THE TURNING OVER vividly portrays the last vestiges of that epoch in a world disintegrating into chaos.

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Reviews

The current horrific news of atrocities in Sierra Leone gives McCauley's bland and undistinguished debut, about foreign aid workers in that country, a cachet it would otherwise lack. His jaded protagonist, Robert Kelley, has lived for the last few years in a remote village, smoking grass, sleeping with his 15-year-old maid and working with the local fishermen to set up a cooperative. Kelley has not fully burnt out, despite the imminent turning over of the cooperative to a corrupt government ministry. Alexander, Kelley's African rival and replacement, is a modern combination of technocratic civil servant and would-be Big Man. The culture clash between Kelley's dormant idealism and Alexander's guarded ambition is deferred, however, when Kelley is offered another development position in an "aquaculture project," which guarantees autonomy from both the government and the chiefs but is located in a politically unstable region and brings him in touch with disaster. McCauley's novel reads like a Joyce Cary tale without Cary's nuanced characterizations or irony. Though Kelley's grim trip may miss the heart of darkness by a long shot, McCauley should be praised for depicting some of the paranoia that comes with political instability and a slight hint of the chaos that will follow.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Set in Sierra Leone during a brief period in 1987, this first novel could occur in almost any developing African country. The action follows Robert Kelley, a young American who has lived in the country for five years. He is handing over to the government a development project of fishing collectives, designed to boost rural nutrition. In his personal life, Kelley is involved with both a village woman and a development worker from nearby Mali. Kelley and others illuminate the complexity, for both locals and expats, of trying to effect positive change. McCauley's depiction of diverse lifestyles and locations, multifaceted corruption, and political instability seems authentic, as he himself lived in West Africa during the mid-1980s. This novel has appeal as an adventure story, a modern love affair, and a tragedy, as Kelley, with others, falls victim to his own frailties. For larger collections and libraries looking for unusual titles.?Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib, Highland Heights
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1579620124
• ISBN 13: 9781579620127
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 231