A triumphant work of imagination by the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Longest Memory. Dear Future tells the story of the youngest child in a Caribbean family who, after being accidentally hit on the head with an axe by his uncle, sees the world from a strange, twisted, visionary perspective.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The hero of Fred D'Aguiar's second novel is a young Caribbean man called Red Head whose world view has been permanently skewed, in a charming way, ever since a blow to his head when he was nine. With his mother away in England on a Government mission to subvert the postal ballots of immigrants for a forthcoming election, Red Head and his brother Bounce, a wrestler, are left in their home town of Ariel. When Bounce must face Singh, the national wrestling champion who is aligned with the political opposition, Red Head's life becomes complicated. The book ends with a series of letters written by Red Head, each beginning "Dear Future."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The political antics and cultural turmoil of an unnamed Caribbean republic on the eve of a presidential election provide a teeming backdrop for the poignant tale of a divided family in D'Aguiar's second novel (after The Longest Memory). When Red Head, a plucky, precocious nine-year-old of mixed African, Portuguese and Indian ancestry, is accidentally struck on the forehead by his uncle Beanstalk's ax, he is overcome with ominous visions in red and black. Having been abandoned by his parents, Red Head lives in the village of Ariel, a bastion of opposition politics, with his eccentric uncles, a religious grandmother and his combative elder brother, Bash Man Goady. Red Head's mother, estranged from her philandering husband, has fled with his three younger brothers to a London slum. When another of Red Head's uncles knocks out a wrestler on a state-sponsored tour, an angry mob of government supporters retaliates by setting fire to the family's house. Meanwhile, the president, a brute who out of pique shoots a horse dead, is waging a dirty campaign while selling out his country. In the novel's final chapter?a series of letters addressed, "Dear Future"? Red Head prays to be reunited with his family?and wonders whether he has any future at all. Veering from a portrait of Red Head's tumultuous family to a sharp satire of the government that has helped tear it asunder, the novel's plot threads intersect gracefully but inconclusively. D'Aguiar succeeds here less in shaping a fully realized novel than in capturing the cultural stresses that rend the social fabric of an unstable Caribbean nation.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Some merit but unsatisfying,
This review is from: Dear Future (Hardcover)
Fred D'Aguiar's novel Dear Future might be better understood as set of impressions on four canvasses. Although the first three sections rely on standard story development techniques, the novel fails as a coherent whole. Readers who enjoy a work in which separate threads are tied up by the end of the work may leave this book dissatisfied.
Each of novel's sections is distinct in style and voice. In the first section, D'Aguiar attempts to use magical realism to paint visceral intriguing images. The style appears forced and unnatural, with errors in point of view, and heavy reliance on adjectives and a preponderance of jarring metaphors. However, D'Aguiar does occasionally offer poignant and original images, such as the interior view of children playing dolls as they hear the sounds of a massacre approaching their door. Each section also spotlights different characters and locations: a young boy and his oddball family in a small village, the president and advisors of a dysfunctional South American republic, a mother struggling abroad in London. The lack of transition between sections is unsettling and forces the reader to identify common threads. As the novel progresses, the style of writing becomes less forced, more honest. By the 3rd section which focuses on the protagonist's mother, D'Aguiar writes succinctly and without guile. The final section, in which the protagonist writes a set of letters from limbo questioning his present and his future, do work in isolation from the rest of the novel. These letters might make a striking set of prose poems. In context of the novel, however, and the reader's questions around plot and meaning, they offer only empty calories. Tasty but not nutritious. The book is short, and while I only begrudge the time spent reading the clumsy first section, I'd not recommend it. If you're looking for something more satisfying in a similar vein, try Marquez.
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