The Promise of Happiness
by Justin Cartwright
(Bloomsbury)
Aptly titled The Promise of Happiness, this novel by Justin Cartwright is an entertaining read. It debunks the myth of the formula: getting married and having children who survive to adulthood ensures happiness.
The 68-year-old patriarch Charles Judd — whose life had been robust as an accountant and leader in his company and who sired four children carried by his wife, Daphne — is becoming frail and ever more pathetic as each day yields its own disappointments.
After the love of his life, his daughter Juliet, is imprisoned in the United States for stealing a stained-glass window, he spends his days being obnoxious and passively aggressive towards his spouse. He becomes more dependent on his wife, who is stuck in a pointless domestic trap.
Judd’s life begins to ebb as he takes ferocious walks along the lousy coastline in Cornwall with his smelly dog, avoiding local pubs and old acquaintances because he is ashamed of his daughter’s imprisonment. He cannot articulate his negative feelings towards her.
His youngest daughter, Sophie, is a drug addict, bonking a man 20 years her senior, a repulsive repetition of his own extramarital affairs with women more or less 20 years his junior.
His profound sense of self-righteousness is overturned and challenged in different ways by his children.
The knowledge that he is a hypocrite, more than his beloved’s criminal activity, compels him to retreat from Daphne, who feels that they never quite knew each other, despite 36 years of marriage.
His insignificant skeletons in the cupboard and his impotence are a far cry from the once-urbane accountant who was edged out of the company by his contemporaries.
More than just telling a story, Cartwright emphasises the notion of families as dysfunctional by stating the members’ idealised expectations of each other. Juliet’s imprisonment is the motif that highlights the fractures in the family and her release recreates a common family focus.
The ambivalence about family is articulated by Charlie, who, as the dependable son, is the thread that pulls the family together. Charlie is doubtful about marrying Ana, who is not only pregnant but also a ravishing “glamour puss”.
Yet his family’s needs generate an understated coercion that results in Charlie’s wedding being a way of welcoming his sister back to England.
The complexities of family relations are told with a wit that is wry and at times outright hilarious. The narrative is located within recent events, reflected by references to Tony Blair, George W Bush and 9/11.
The family members have deeply ingrained prejudices, with the father stating that the “effect of having an empire: [was] the unknowable was lurking beyond the firelights; the fuzzy-wuzzies were ready at any moment to reclaim the wilderness”.
The manner in which the South African-born Cartwright speaks about Africans, Jews, Italians and so on reflects a common racist discourse of creating stereotypes of those not English. This is very disappointing as it blatantly undermines the intelligence of this otherwise well-crafted novel.
Cartwright — who won the Whitbread Novel Award and the White Lightning for his previous works and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and another Whitbread Novel Award in 2002 — takes the reader on a journey of how broken human spirits heal through love, forgiveness and new beginnings.