Unforgiven [Paperback]

Sammy was born in 1963 in Surrey, UK, but spent his childhood in Cyprus along with his sister and where his father worked as a civil engineer. His part time hippie parents encouraged a natural free thinking way of life, but all that was to change when Sammy was eleven, and circumstances forced him back to the UK where his grandparents sent him to a respectable but unremarkable public school.

It was at this school, Redpath College, that Sammy met Rajiv, a slim, beautiful dark skinned East Indian boy whose wealthy family live on a Sansobella, a Caribbean island. The two boys could not be more different, Sammy laid back, untidy and averse to work, Rajiv neat to a fault and with a serious work ethic, yet they became best friends, a friendship that will last well beyond their school days.

The summer that Rajiv takes his friend to his island home, Sammy is enchanted, here is the paradise he seeks. But much will happen before he will find himself in his tropical paradise, and even then nothing will be secure - for even in paradise trouble is just beneath the surface.

The story follows Sammy through his childhood in Cyprus, his schoolboy years in the UK, the woman in his life, how he finds his way to the US, to the West Indies and to his penultimate destination, where he finally makes his own way and is admired by both locals and tourists for his easy going idyllic life, until the troubles that are to come and their consequences.

Unforgiven is a beautiful story that take place for the most part in an even more beautiful setting. Both Sammy and Rajiv are likeable boys who grow into decent men - once Sammy overcomes his problems. The writing is very descriptive, the Caribbean island of Sansobella along with its near neighbour St George (and less so Dorado, the third of the island group) are vividly depicted, as is the social and political structure of the islands. The majority poor of black African origin being the underdogs lorded over by the wealthy East Indians and other minority groups, and to some extent we are helped to understand the way of thinking of the black African population.

The narrative is for the most part in the third person, but interspersed are occasional and very short chapters which seem to be the responses to interviews with various characters: Sammy's sister, his grandmother, Rajiv and others, and these interestingly give a hint that something of concern has occurred.

While for the most part enjoying this book I have some reservations. It is not an overly long novel, perhaps just little longer than average, yet it seemed at times interminable, I think due to the excesses of the descriptive prose. On more than one occasion I almost gave up on the book. I think the reason for my impatience stems from the fact that Sansobellla and St George are fictitious islands (supposedly situated between Grenada and Trinidad); the descriptions are so precise that I feel they must be based on a real place, and I could not help wondering which Caribbean Islands were the models, in fact I felt cheated being deprived of this information. Put another way if I am going to read at such length about these places I want to know where they really are. (I realise that this might present the author with problems of identifying the troubles that occur with an named island, but such matters are not insurmountable, and there are writers who have not feared to do this.)

I was disappointed too in the development of both Sammy and Rajiv, they are interesting characters yet somehow they never became completely real, I never really felt in my heart for them and so what transpired for them lost much of its impact. Sammy's troubled life and what he endures before finding his final destiny should have moved me deeply, but I felt I viewed it all with a little more that an academic interest. Jules Hardy I feel had more sympathy for her female characters: Sammy's mother Beatrice, and the wealthy and abrasive plantation heiress Susannah Huggins. Of course other readers may feel differently.

It is an interesting read and one which gives some insight into the peoples of the Caribbean; knowing many people from these islands, both of African and Asian descent, I recognise many of their characteristics as depicted here. But It is not a book I can recommend unreservedly, if you like reading long sometimes repetitive descriptions, if you have nothing else lined up to read (or do), this will no doubt keep you entertained. But if you want the narrative to occasionally get a move on, and if you want to feel more for the main protagonists, you might at times find this a frustrating read.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see the review  3.0 out of 5 stars