The Promise: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)

A heavy read. I gave it a gallant effort but I skipped a few funerals to get to the ending. Writing style was too all of the place for me and I did not feel very connected to book's characters. An examination of South Africa's Apartheid system over decades within one family's experiences was not my cup of tea.

The Promise is Damon Galguts 9th novel Please read through all the comments as with our meetings we start with the low and move onto the high. My favourite quote from one of you was that the book "was haunted by unmet promise" Rachel Swart is in the final decline of a terminal cancer when she extracts a promise from her husband, Manie: he agrees to give their maid Salome the deed to the Lombard Place, a small house on the family’s farm. It is an act of recognition. - Galgut chose to use prose in the experimental style of James Joyce and Virginia Wolf. - Four Funerals and Apartheid, - Some liked and some were annoyed by the transition in tenses sometimes even within a sentence. - There were no likable characters. - Astrid's suffered a violent death but the author didn't treat it as such. - Did the characters mistake guilt for atonement. - a member felt the book was vacuous with no love, of people or land. - a tedious joyless read. - The book is in four sections with no chapters. At times it’s hard to know who is supposed to be speaking, the narrative hops and jumps from person to person - a finely crafted novel with well-developed characters, the majority of whom are unsympathetic. - an unusual and provocative book - The Promise was a brilliant read for me - a very refreshing style of narration - This was so reminiscent of South Africa and so true I will read it twice - This is a book about an unfulfilled promise in a family and the unfilled promise of a nation - I will have to check the author’s other work; he has a unique style. - A thoughtful and moving book about the moral failures and racism of white South Africans Crikey to go from a 1 to 10 is pretty incredible.

Wasn't my favorite, though the writing was good.

A story set in South Africa - tells of an Afrikaans family pre/post apartheid. Some pretty vile characters, but an insight to a particular mindset. The end is worth it.

Unlike anything I've read