A Distant Shore

I got this book for a class, and I wasn't pleasantly surprised with how quickly it arrived.

The work warmed me, massaged my frontal lobes by the third chapter. I was intrigued by the way the book was drawn, prettier than flashback. The story plays like an accordian, folding in on itself, each part touching the others by the book's end. The characters develop in hunking displaced quarters that beg the reader to forage her heart for compassion. This is how we live and grow, it says -- one scene at a time, life event by life event. And haven't we all? Would any of us recognize our 40 year-old selves if our life movie were played for us at 14? Unlikely, but the view from there to here is dramatic, and Phillips has drawn that line back to a distant shore.

"A Distant Shore (ADS)" is Caryl Phillips' beautifully mature and emotionally resonant new novel about life in contemporary England. The story's protagonists, Dorothy and Soloman, can't come from more different backgrounds. She's white, he's black. She's a lonely retired schoolteacher with deep family secrets, including a broken marriage, to haunt her. He's the sole survivor of a family wiped out by ethnic cleansing in an unnamed African country and an illegal immigrant desperate to begin a new life in civilised and democratic England. They are both "outsiders" in their own social context and outsiders recognise if not seek each other out in their subconscious yearning for human contact. Their dim lives brighten up albeit briefly when they intersect before fate rudely steps in to despatch them to their own black holes. Significantly, even their shared loneliness could not bridge the gap in their ethnic and social differences when they tried to connect but sadly failed. Unbeknown to them, they would never get a second chance. Phillips tells his story backwards with time scale detours in between. The final outcome comes as a shock when it is revealed less than a quarter of our way through. We then backtrack into the past when Soloman was Gabriel and we follow his escape route out of hell into the land of milk and honey. Dorothy, who disappears for much of the middle section, returns in the final third to reveal her own private hell from being repeatedly used and humiliated by men, including a male colleague and an immigrant grocer, who aren't interested in anything but a casual sexual relationship. Her fragile mental state takes a turn for the worse after she arrives a little too late to nurse her estranged and dying lesbian sister and goes into terminal decline when her friendship with Soloman is cruelly ended. Phillips' narrative technique parallels the novel's theme of alienation and displacement. The early Dorothy sequence suggests she's an unreliable narrator before we finally realise she's indeed in mental decline. The quick cuts as we leap backwards and forwards in time is fused together expertly and seamlessly, so we don't find it confusing. Blighted by racism and parochialism, Phillips's contemporary England isn't a pretty sight. You may not die from ethnic cleansing in England but all the same, it's a society fraying at the edges from the pressures of new social forces at work. Yet the deep, deep sadness at the heart of ADS is tempered by the realisation that in life, there's always kindness and goodness to be found in the most casual or unlikely of places and persons (eg, Soloman's sponsors from the north have absolute hearts of gold). "A Distant Shore" is an excellent novel that will appeal to readers who love books that speak of deep and personal truths. Those who enjoyed Clare Morrall's "Astonishing Splashes Of Colours", one of last year's Booker Prize nominees, will also love "A Distant Shore".

Melancholy, regret and loss are the themes of Phillips intuitive, mellifluous, and smooth novel A Distant Shore. The author cuts time with a knife, as we are effortlessly transported backwards and forwards in time throughout the lives of the two main protagonists Dorothy and Solomon. Neither of them shares that much in common, but their disparate journeys of self-discovery parallel in the most unlikely ways. Both characters are fragile and brittle and spend their lives living in a new housing estate on the outskirts of a rather provincial English village. She's recently bought a new house, and he's recently found a job as a night watchman. He is black and an immigrant from Africa, escaping from a terrible and bloody civil war, and she is a recently retired music teacher who is running from a scandalous affair. Solomon is a former soldier who is escaping the horrors of a war-ravaged African country, he enters England illegally and is forced to undergo many of the trials and tribulations of a man who is sick, tired and worn out. Dorothy is reeling from a dysfunctional childhood, a loveless marriage and a messy divorce. Estranged from her sister Sheila, she is forced to reconnect and care for her sister who is dying of cancer. Both are lonely, and full of life's disappointments and traumas. Dorothy notices "this lonely man who washes his car with a concentration that suggests a difficult life." And Solomon washes with a intensity "that would appear to be an attempt to erase a past that he no longer wishes to be reminded of." Racism, the perils of illegal immigration, the changing face of British society, the consequences of loneliness and loss are all bought to the forefront with such genuine honesty and compassion. Phillips is in complete control of his narrative as the back-stories of Solomon and Dorothy are carefully revealed. This isn't a happy read - forlorn and sorrow permeates the novel. But it is unsurpassed as a contemporary tale of people who are struggling against disaffectedness and isolation.Michael

Caryl Phillips' "A Distant Shore" is a somber but moving tale. I found it quite profound as it traces the lives of two people who never quite connect with each other or the world around them. Dorothy is in her mid-50's and lives in a new development called Stoneleigh outside a smaller city of Weston somewhere north of London. She has been divorced which lead to several affairs such as with married Arab magazine/book seller Mahmood and the separated fellow teacher Geoff Waverly. Neither of these is very satisfying. The affair with the teacher results in Dorothy losing her job and being sent into a forced retirement. We learn of Dorothy's loss of her sister Sheila to cancer plus her sister's lesbian betrayer Maria and Dorothy's guilt about disconnecting from her sister for so many years. Dorothy most connects with the equally isolated Solomon, a black nightwatchman who volunteers to drive the elderly to medical appointments and must endure racial slurs and hate mail. Phillips gives us a good snapshot of the two characters and then delves into the past to show us what brought them to this point. The tale of Solomon who has changed his name from Gabriel in his native African country to escape the savagery that resulted in the massacre of his family and led to a valiant covert escape hinging on bribes, payoffs and danger is probably the most moving section of the tale. To me, equally profound is the descent into madness that Dorothy takes where Phillips gives us clue about all of Dorothy's thought processes and then glimpses of how others outside her view her emotional outbursts that are apparently uncontrolled. The world of "A Distant Shore" is one of outcasts and the lonely. While melancholy, I found it moving and profound. Phillips' sense of rhythm and pacing make the book alternately thunder and meander. Enjoy!