After the opening paragraph of this book, Naipaul has the father of the protagonist narrate a long story. Willie, with Somerset as his middle name, asks why he was named so, and his father starts on a life-long story of his relation with the famous English author. Willie writes that the story that he has now written is a summary of different versions that his father told him throughout the years, and it isn’t clear whether his father named him Somerset because he was fond of the author. It is the story of his father’s bold step to break free from the caste-system, become an active follower of Mahatma Gandhi, burning his BA books, and running off with a girl from a ‘backward’ caste. After finding himself in a pool of trouble, both from his father and the girl’s uncle, Wille’s father takes refuge in an ashram and vows on a silence strike. What his father has done is no minor thing: not only had he disrespected the caste system, which is equal to disrespecting their religious beliefs, he has also spoiled their family life-long missionary lineage, and with it, their good name.
Yet the silent vow earns Willie’s father a lot of attention, and when the author Somerset comes to visit and then write about him, the attention turns into fame – and he is longer in any danger. His earned fame also earns him protection. But he soon realizes that in his zealous attempts of youth at a life of significance were superficial at best: the fame he has earned has no meaning, and the girl he ran away with, he now despises. Willie, however, is born.
It was quite a different experience for me to read so much of the novel being narrated right at the front in form of a story. Hosseini, in his novel ‘And the Mountains Echoed’, also open his novel with an anecdote, but that has nothing to with the main story of the novel. Here, however, the story Willie’s father tells is the whole prologue of the novel and shows its presence throughout the novel.
I first came across Naipaul in an article, probably of The New Yorker, titled ‘The Strangeness of Grief’. Although I remember next to nothing about that article and what it talked about, I do remember learning the fact about dying cats – that they run away to die in solitary. I only chanced upon this book through an Instagram page that resells the used books between readers.
While the beginning of the novel had me thinking about Arundhati Roy, I soon realized that this novel that nothing of the striking prose, intricate storytelling, and moving plot. Willie, having a difficult relationship with his father, leaves for London to pursue his higher education, once his father finds him a scholarship through his old connections. Once in London, Willie begins his first of ‘half a life’ lives. Studies don’t interest him, and he finds himself to be incomplete in the foreign land. His family background shows its prudent effects in him, and his lack of knowledge about the history and global affairs makes him feel inadequate. Sexual inexperience also becomes a challenge for him, as he is barely able to make the girls aroused or last any significant time in bed.
He tries his hand at writing stories, something he was good at during school. After writing a few articles for a newspaper, he soon finds someone who promises him to publish his book if he manages to write one. Mixing his old stories from India with the current alienation of life and picking his characters from Hollywood movies, he writes a book of short stories. But when the first five copies of it come out, and having received the advance, he feels disappointed and even disgusted at his own writing – and to his demise, he once again realizes that this isn’t his life nor the identity he was after.
Part three of this novel follows Willie, as he narrates his story to his sister, about leaving London with his girlfriend, later wife, Ana for an African country – and, there too, he fails to live a complete life. Language barriers, cultural shock, civil skirmishes, and later his experiment with prostitutes, all compile to present a detestable life, once again, for Willie. He moves to Germany to live with her sister Sorjani and her German husband. The novel ends at half of Willie’s life.
Naipaul's Booker nominated book failed to have any impression on me whatsoever. The story remained a stranger to me, and Willie proved to be one of the most unimpressive protagonists that I’ve ever come across. Naipaul’s prose was also one of the plainest I’ve read. There’s nothing about this novel that jumps at you, or interests you in any impactful way – reading it was a monotonous experience from first page to last. Perhaps, that was what Naipaul might have aimed at: an unimpressive life and the quiet ordinariness of it.
Ratings: 2/5 ** August 11, 2022_