Customer Reviews

FOREIGN LAND

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are many books that are rivals for the award of best beginning, but this is definitely my vote for the best ever ending of a novel. Obviously I can't tell you the end, because that would spoil it, but the end of this book has kept me thinking for years since I read it. The story itself is low key, an aging man who has spent his productive years abroad and finds no solace in returning home. He decides to head off into the teeth of a rebellion rather than vegetate in the country of his birth. The novel is well written, with the nautical detail that you would expect from Raban. It is a book written at the pace of the central character, a little slow reflecting his age and the age in which he grew up. Believe me, though, this is one you want to finish, The ending is just brilliant.

I've just read this book for the fourth time and with the same pleasure as the first.

It is the tale of a 60-year-old Englishman, George Grey, who retires to Cornwall after working in the shipping business in West Africa for over 30 years.

Adjusting to a new life means trying to re-establish a relationship with his estranged daughter who is in her mid-30s and cope with a society that has changed so much during his absence that it has become virtually a foreign land.

He also tries to cope with the end of his affair with a local woman back in Africa at the same time as he strikes up a contact with another former expatriate - an Englishwoman in her 50s who used to be a well-known singer and lived in the United States.

It all proves to be too much and the only way he can escape is by abandoning his moral scruples and using a secret bribe he accepted from a corrupt African dictator that allows him to buy his own boat and find the freedom he seeks.

It is a bittersweet story and Raban leaves the reader on the last page to decide whether George will find the heaven he is looking for or end up in a more hellish kind of place.

Much of the book takes place inside George's head as he has conversations with his long-dead father, an eccentric Church of England clergyman, his war bride ex-wife whom he has not seen for years and other characters from his childhood and period in the navy.

At times it is very funny - George's bafflement with TV shows and his hopeless dealings with a lecherous television shop owner - and other times poignant as he realizes that he will never to restore any real link with his daughter.

I am surprised that Raban does raise the moral issue of George's use of the bribe but I am not complaining as this would have gone against the tone of the book.

Raban portrays his characters affectionately and is particularly convincing in writing about the difference between living on land and living on a boat.

This is a book of gaps - gaps in time, gaps in explanation, and gaps in feeling. While it does inspire thought, the ending folds itself into an empty experience that has too many loose ends from the early acquaintance the reader makes with the principal character. Although it has its moments, moments do not a memorable book make.