Book worm
By John AndrewsLast month I promised you a journey to India, and I will not disappoint. However, we do not start in India, but in Wales in the sombre aftermath of the Great War, just as those lucky enough to escape the trenches return home to a vast emptiness. Isabel’s love, Gareth, was one of the unlucky ones who perished in the ditches of Arras.
On the rebound, and choosing life more than love, Isabel rushes into marrying Neville, a non-commissioned officer on leave from his regiment in India.
A Black Englishman, published by Faber and Faber in 2004, is Carolyn Slaughter’s best book to date. It is an enthralling novel, full of local colour and period detail.
The passage to India with the increasingly cold and uncompromising Neville sets the scene for their arrival at the cantonment in Ferozepore, one of the 14 provinces of the Raj in what was called in those days up-country India.
Nothing prepares Isabel for the loneliness of her position, and the life she encounters as the wife of a brutal and unloving NCO. Her unhappiness thrusts her into a passionate and dangerous liaison with Sam, an Indian doctor, who insists on the right to be both black and British.
Barred from the endless drinks parties, swimming, tennis and tea dances by reason of her husband’s rank, Isabel travels on horseback into the mysterious Indian countryside and this is where the author is at her best in describing in intimate detail the heat, colour and smells of Ferozepore.
The same applies as Isabel flees to Simla and completes a remarkable journey across the province with her faithful servant Joseph.
Carolyn Slaughter seizes on the complex historical and cultural ambiguities of the dying days of the Raj, lacing them into a richly detailed, passionately-felt story that explores the crossing of moral, racial and social boundaries.