A Perfect Pledge

Moving, funny and captivating, this new novel by the author of The Lagahoo’s Apprentice and Homer in Flight takes us to village Trinidad and a family headed by an irascible cane farmer who continually plots to improve life for his family and contemporaries, much to their dismay. Narpat thought he would never have a son, but after three girls, his wife gives birth to Jeeves, a scrawny little boy who comes to adore his storytelling father and wishes only to share in the old man’s “futurist” ambitions. The lopsided family home has no indoor plumbing or electricity and Narpat’s wife, Dulari, who thought marriage to a Brahmin would mean a life with creature comforts, longs for a little convenience. But Narpat eschews materialism and insists that his family go without many of the treats that others take for granted. His dietary pronouncements are hilarious, and Jeeves especially is made to eat a strict diet with the appropriate balance of nutritive and purgative foods. Through Jeeves’s eyes, we see Narpat in his dealings with fellow villagers, a range of Dickensian characters such as Huzaifa, a Muslim who is close to Narpat but makes himself scarce whenever his friend is engaged in schemes involving manual labour; David Doon, newly arrived on the island after a sojourn in Canada, who dreams of becoming a writer, is seduced by the gossip in the village rumshops — grist for the literary mill — and eventually just by the rum; and a man known simply as the Manager — an interfering, small-time swindler who hangs out at the local school. Reminiscent of Rohinton Mistry and V. S. Naipaul, A Perfect Pledge follows Narpat as his obsessions grow more quixotic and as Jeeves tries to save him from what he knows must inevitably follow. From the Hardcover edition.