THE PROMISE

'The Promise' by Damon Galgut is last year's Booker Prize winner and a poignant and emotive story about living with the consequences of an unfulfilled promise. Beginning just as South Africa was transitioning out of apartheid, Galgut's novel provides an honest insight into the personal impact of the country's recent history.

Set on a farm outside Pretoria in the mid 80s, the novel opens with the death of Rachel - Ma - who leaves behind a broken family and a promise from her husband Manie that their black housemaid Salome must be given her own house and land. This promise is overheard by her youngest daughter Amor whose unwillingness to let the matter drop becomes a jinx which overshadows any family unity. When the white Afrikaner family gather at Rachel's funeral this promise is deferred as the family comes to terms with Ma's wishes to receive a Jewish burial in conflict with her own family's faith. Ma leaves behind other ghosts impacting her immediate family - alongside husband Manie are their three children - each with their own demons. Eldest son Anton cannot escape from an impulsive crime he commits whilst doing his service, Astrid, once carefree and joyous finds herself unhappily married with twins and consequently striving for an unrealistic better life, whilst Amor whose near death experience as a child seems to have marked her as separate from her siblings can never forgive her family for not honouring their mother's promise.

Divided into four stories the story moves along seamlessly from one character to the next over the subsequent four decades. The writing is beautifully crafted. Galgut expertly switches narration, often in the middle of a thought process catching you unaware, his original descriptions, the asides as if the author is saying "come on, you know what I mean" and the subtle thought process which as a reader you feel part of. Lastly there is the unsaid - you know there is so much more to know about Salome but that almost seems to be the point.

"The box is empty and has four sides, no, six, no, more, but what does it matter when it's going into the ground?"

Funerals bring the family together over the decades at which point they try to understand old wounds as well as reconsider 'the promise' that remains broken. And lastly, the final question - could Manie have fulfilled his promise even if wanted to?