Kwame Dawes
SALT by Earl Lovelace (Persea, R107)
IT has been over 10 years since Earl Lovelace published his last novel, The Wine of Astonishment, so it is wonderful that Salt has been honoured with the Commonwealth Prize. It is his most assured work to date, and it allows him to display his remarkable capacity as a poetic and innovative fiction- writer. It represents Lovelace’s take on Caribbean colonial and post-colonial history and is, no doubt, a novel that he needed to write.
In it he charts the twisted and convoluted history of Trinidadian society in a language that dances with sheer audacity. And yet there is something peculiarly familiar about it.
Salt, one could argue, has been written before by other writers, and while it may be one of the better incarnations of the “making of the West Indies”, it remains a work that echoes Lawrence Scott, George Lamming and others. Yet the inclination to cover material that has been dealt with by others does not automatically make it a failure.
Salt follows the life of Alford George, a schoolteacher who finds himself stranded in the Caribbean. He remains in Trinidad and goes on to a career as a politician. His struggles are placed in the context of the history of his slave ancestors, whose past is characterised by magic, mystery and the sheer energy to survive.
Lovelace tells this story in a language that shifts deftly from dialect to standard English. The poetry that results is seductive, evocative and at times quite brilliant.
But Lovelace has spoiled me. I have come to expect from him a certain currency of vision, a daring stylistic instinct and a willingness to enact the current realities of his society. These are the qualities that lifted The Wine of Astonishment into an urban narrative of tragic proportion. Salt does not have that immediacy.
For all that, those not familiar with the range of this West Indian writer will find Salt is a solid introduction to his work. – The Washington Post