Roy A. K. Heath (1926–2008)

This is the story of Galton, a Guyanese man who grows up under the thumb of his repressive mother. He has always wanted to be like his older brother Selwyn, who escaped his mother's influence and leads a "normal" life, happily married with children and successful in business. Galton is not so fortunate. While ultimately he marries Gemma, he and Gemma live unhappily in a wharf-side tenement, occupied by seedy characters like "the Informant." The book records Galton's slow descent into show more paranoia and his eventual murder of his wife.

Heath is a Guyanese writer, and the novel is infused with a sense of place. Much of the dialogue is in Guyanese dialect (largely easily understandable). He has said that his work is "intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth century Guyana." This novel won the Guardian Fiction Prize for 1978, and is included in the Modern Library: 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950 by Carmen Callil and Colm Toibin.

This is a good book, but I wasn't blown away.

3 stars show less

In contrast to his elder brother Selwyn, Galton has neither self awareness nor self confidence, ascribed to his bad tempered and controlling mother and leaving him withdrawn and misogynistic. This wanders through fatally toxic masculinity remaining ambiguous as to responsibility with regard to it. Galton and certain other characters are repulsive and all are flawed and fairly shallow.

Roy Heath writes quite compelling tales of oddball Guyanese people, set against a vivid backdrop of life there.
Galton Flood - from a "decent" family, but alienated, damaged by his relationship to his mother, finds himself a dropout, in a seedy lodging house, attracted by his landlord's daughter.
As Gemma's past (and Galton's imaginings) combine, a terrible situation arises...

Despite being a fairly short book (186p), I found it took me quite a while to wade through it..and yet it's quite well written and memorable. You just can't do too much at a time.
This is the final volume of Heath's Armstrong trilogy (of which I'd read the first last year), featuring a dysfunctional family- well-to-do mother, abusive father, disapproving relatives on both sides- and as we learn here, a brother who has left town after becoming inappropriately involved with his sister
This show more volume concerns itself with said sister.
I found Genetha a somewhat unknowable character, drifting as a lonely, respectable woman from her boring, correct suitor into a highly unsuitable relationship with one Fingers. Things go terribly wrong; and after a spell in a mental institution, Genetha is forever labelled. Moving between religion, her disapproving maternal relatives....and the former servant, who since being unfairly dismissed by Genetha's late mother offers the girl a non-judgemental home in her brothel...
There's a strange dreamy quality to the tale, but Heath sure can write! show less