Carolyn Slaughter: A Black Englishman

This novel takes place in the early 1920s and opens in post-war Wales where Isabel (the narrator) is about to marry Neville, a career soldier based in India. "I'd chosen marriage more than Neville, and more than either I'd chosen Life ... I had to get out of Wales. And I had to forget the dead."

By the time they disembark in Bombay it is obvious the marriage is one of convenience for both of them. They journey for days to Delhi and then further north to the army base. And it is in the descriptions of the ever-changing countryside and people that author Slaughter is at her best.

She conveys images so convincingly it's as if the reader can see them too. "Blue blossoms fell like rain through pale leaves with emerald underlays, a deep shade overlit by intense sunshine, and then suddenly there'd be a red canna lily like a splash of blood." And "Orchids and hibiscus smother the black tropical floor of the valley, waterfowl swoop, parrots and doves gossip in the mulberry trees, and flocks of cormorants make waves through the glistening air."

Neville joins his regiment at the front and no sooner has he departed, it seems, than Isabel has fallen in love with and become the lover of Sam Singh, an Indian doctor (educated at Eton and Oxford).

The story almost becomes Mills and Boon-ish but manages to transcend this by concentrating on the politics of the closing years of the British Rule (with the subsequent deterioration in the relationship between the English and Indians), the caste system, the savage enmity between Muslim and Hindu and the lack of rights for women, especially those who dare to have liaisons with those of another caste or race.

It is a gentle love story between Isabel and Sam and their deepening relationship (cushioned by their individual wealth) as Sam comes to terms with his dual identity and Isabel studies medicine, and tries to regain her sense of self. And as she succeeds in this, coinciding with the horrific scenes of the Indian Uprising and the return of Neville, the novel suddenly becomes very much alive and the reader becomes aware how everything prior has occurred as though through a window -- from a distance. (A pity it hadn't happened a little earlier as I was becoming somewhat bored.)

Slaughter has great powers of observation and as her characters criss-cross India she describes in detail the furniture, clothes, colours, smells, sumptuous hotels, the intolerable heat, the monsoon rains, flora and fauna, and most of all the people. Her depiction of the servant Joseph and his relationship with Memsahib Isabel is a delight.

A Black Englishman does not have the scale or density of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, but it does capture a vision of a changing India and Slaughter's deep love of the country.

Penguin, $33

* Louise Nisbet-Smith is an Auckland reviewer.