Half a LIFE. Review on Half a Life - V S Naipaul

HALF A LIFE is the latest novel of the Trinidadian author V.S. Naipaul,

who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for works that

‘compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories’.(Naipaul was

quoted as being surprised and honoured at receiving the prize, saying

that ‘it is a great tribute to England, my home, and to India, home of

my ancestors’ [while neglecting mention of Trinidad, his birthplace]).

Naipaul also received the Booker Prize in 1971 for his book IN A FREE

STATE, amongst other awards. As in many of his other novels, HALF A

LIFE draws heavily from Naipaul’s personal experiences, in particular

his experience as a Trinidadian Indian immigrating to the old imperial

centre, London, in the 1950’s.

One might divide HALF A LIFE

into four sections: the first being the story of the protagonist’s

father, the second as the experiences of the protagonist, Willie

Chandran, in India and his early experiences at university in London,

the third the protagonist’s latter experiences and successes in London

and the final section is Chandran’s life in an African nation in the

last throes of colonialism.

The novel opens thus:

‘Willie

Chandran asked his father one, “Why is my middle name Somerset? The

boys at school have just found out, and they are mocking me.”

His

father said without joy, “You were named after a great English writer.

I am sure you have seen his books about the house.”

“But I haven’t read them. Did you admire him so much?”

“I am not sure. Listen, and make up your own mind.”

And this was the story Willie Chandran’s father began to tell. It took

a long time. The story changed as Willie grew up. Things were added,

and by the time Willie left India to go to England this was the story

he had heard…’

The remainder of the first section is told in

the fi

rst person(Naipaul slips seamlessly from third to first person a

number of times in the novel – I didn’t even notice the transition at

first). The father begins by telling how he became the model for a

character in Somerset Maugham’s novel THE RAZOR’S EDGE, the indirect

result of heeding the call of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s call for

‘sacrifice’ compels the father to sacrifice in the only way he feels he

can – by turning his back on his high-caste Brahmin heritage and

marrying a ‘tribal’, low-caste woman. This ill-fated union causes the

father much regret and resentment, as do the children that issue from

it. Here again we can see Naipaul’s masterful and fascinating painting

of familial relations, although this element plays a much smaller role

than it does in his lengthier(and excellent) novel A HOUSE FOR MR

BISWAS(in part a fictionalised biography of Naipaul’s father). The

father’s idea of ‘sacrifice’ ends up creating much bitterness in his

wife, his son and himself.

The

second section of the novel begins the development of the protagonist,

Willie Chandran(in the third person). Willie’s ‘difficult’ home-life

impels him to begin to re-invent himself(and his family), first in his

English composition class, for which his writes about himself as being

part of a happy Canadian family, which goes to the beach for its

holidays. Willie’s re-invention continues through-out the novel, and

seems to be part of the notion of ‘half a life’, to which the title

refers. Willie is often uncomfortable around other people as a result

of this re-invention and his apparent inability to ‘live fully’ also

stems partially from this ‘rewriting of his self’.

Willie’s

father is later able to gain him a scholarship to university in London,

where his begins rewriting his identity. One detail he re-invents is—ra

ther than his father being a Brahmin and a mother a member of a

‘backwards’ caste, half-educated at a Christian missionary school—that

he is a Christian Indian belonging to an ancient Christian community in

India(there do indeed exist such communities in India). In fact, he is

actually commissioned to do a piece on India’s ‘old’ Christian

communities versus its newer ‘missionary’ Christian communities for the

BBC [here is another autobiographic fact, that Naipaul worked for the

BBC during his early years in London]. Through his work with the BBC

and through his university, Willie meets other people whose life

stories echo his own woes of mixed birth and ethnic/cultural

‘displacement’. One such person is Percy Cato, a Jamaican of mixed

parentage(Indian, African, European) who is not, strictly-speaking,

Jamaican, as he was born and bred in Panama(‘I am the only black man

or Jamaican or West Indian you’ll meet in England who knows nothing

about cricket.’). Percy also re-invents his past, making his father a

literate clerk in Panama rather than a heavy-labourer. Another is

Marcus, the son of a [black] West Indian who went to live in West

Africa as part of the Back to Africa movement, whose fondest desire is

to have grandchildren who look completely white(claiming that ‘the

Negro gene is recessive’), and whose second greatest desire to be the

first black man to have an account at Coutts, the Queen’s bank(though

it is not clear that they don’t already have black clients…).

Willie

struggles in London, attending bohemian parties, and is frustrated both

with trying to write a book and to overcome self-doubt in his sexual

adventures(had mainly with the girl-friends of his friends). He is

finally ‘rescued’ from his careening despair by Ana, one of the

erstwhile fans of his poorly-received sole publication. Ana is another

‘mestizo’,

of mixed Portuguese and African blood. Willie clings

to Ana, eventually following her back to her unnamed Africa homeland

[very probably Mozambique] to live for eighteen years on her father’s

crumbling estate. One day he slips on their marble stairs and after

waking up in a military hospital tells Ana that, ‘I am going to leave

you…I can’t live your life any more. I want to live my own.’

The

final section of the novel is told once again in the first person, by

Willie to his sister(who has married a German), of his life in Africa

with Ana. They live in an estate manor, socialising almost only with

other ‘mixed breeds’, Portuguese ‘tainted’ with African blood, who are

accepted as second-class citizen by the pure Portuguese colonists

during the colonial government(and again are not accepted by the

‘native’ post-colonial regime). The re-occurrence of persons of mixed

blood is another of the ‘halves’ of HALF A LIFE. Willie begins

frequenting African prostitutes, even though they do not really satisfy

him, until he meets Graça, with whom he begins to have an undisguised

affair. Willie thinks at first that during his time with Graça that he

is truly living, but his despair is never far from him.

Willie’s

sexual encounters, both in London and in Africa, are narrated with an

unusual frankness. But they are far from being erotic, titillating

descriptions, rather they are written with a hard and weary honesty –

somewhat reminiscent of the tone of some of J.M. Coetzee’s work

(particularly of his 1999 Booker-Award winning novel DISGRACE).

Despite

his neglecting to mention Trinidad on receiving his Nobel Prize,

Naipaul has written some excellent books which give a lively and

colourful picture of Trinidad—if you like HALF A LIFE, I recommend(of

his Trinidad volumes)