The Promise by Damon Galgut

On a farm outside Pretoria, the Swarts are gathering for Ma’s funeral. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for – not least their treatment of the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. Salome was to be given her own house, her own land… yet somehow, that vow is carefully ignored.

As each decade passes, and the family assemble again, one question hovers over them. Can you ever escape the repercussions of a broken promise?

This is a story about a family whose members do not understand each other. They make assumptions about each other and they are dismissive when one of them does not fit into their own narrative of the way that person should be. The members of the younger generation barely speak to each other – not necessarily because they do not get along but because they have very little in common beyond being members of the same family. If they were not biologically related, they would not feature in each other’s lives.

The book opens with Amor being informed of her mother’s death and travelling back to the family farm outside Pretoria. Ma has been ill for some time but Amor is convinced that she overheard her telling Pa that she wanted Salome to be given the deeds to the small house she occupies on the farmland. Amor’s hopes are crushed when Pa denies knowledge of that promise.

As the years go by, and against the backdrop of the end of apartheid and the unsettled political situation that follows, the family gathers at intervals for more funerals. Salome is a constant presence, always in the background and always silent.

The narrative style in The Promise flows from one person to the next without pause, portraying the given situation from multiple angles and thereby giving the reader a thorough and rounded perspective. The narrative goes off on tangents but these are always somehow relevant, adding important information and perspective to the wider context.

This style also means that the reader can understand and sympathise with the characters’ flaws. Particularly with the younger generation, the flowing and rather detached narrative style highlights that we are all shaped by our experiences, however subtle or insignificant they might be, and in particular by our position in our families. When the family gathers, this story highlights how easy it is to revert back to our own perceived role and to treat other members of our families in the way that we perceive them from the perspective of our own role, forgetting that we do not have to be bound by those roles, and often resenting the way in which we spring back to those roles so easily.

The Promise is an important literary work in its portrayal of the decreasing importance of a white South African family through the end of apartheid and beyond, as well as being a shrewd portrayal of individuals trying to break free from the roles life has assigned to them.