The truth of life in Bermuda
BASIL’S DREAM
By Christine Hale
292 pp. Livingston Press $16.95
Review by Gilion Dumas
Basil’s Dream by Christine Hale has all the makings of a National Book Award winner. That is not to say that it is the most entertaining or approachable book around, but it has all the necessary ingredients: an interesting hook, a complex plot, multi-dimensional characters in complicated relationships, big ideas with some moral ambiguity, and literary merit.
The story is set in Bermuda in the months shortly after 9/11, when the lack of American tourists and global insecurity wreaked havoc on the island’s economy. Racial tensions run high after the unsolved murders of two black men and an attack on a prominent member of the island’s British community. Labor strikes, arson, graft, and corruption are all painted into the backdrop of Hale’s story.
From the cover we learn that Hale conceived the premise for her novel after living in Bermuda for several years. She arrived on the island feeling “white, American, gauche, and utterly unwelcome” and launched herself “with a writer’s tenacious curiosity into observation of the way class, color, and nationality played out in Bermuda’s social and political activities.” Taking time and paying attention, Hale “gradually discovered a complex culture, differing in myriad subtle ways from the American one it served and the British one it appeared to mimic.” She turned her observations into a novel in her attempt to tell the complicated truth of life in Bermuda.
The complex plot centers on the Langston family—American expatriates taking advantage of the island’s lenient corporate policies. As cranky Darrell Langston struggles to get a new insurance company up and running, Lucy struggles to create a home for the family and salvage their marriage. Their 12-year-old son Peyton just struggles. Absorbed by their own difficulties, they turn away from each other as they drift further apart.
Meanwhile, Marcus Passjohn, the liberal Opposition Leader and favorite son of the island’s black population, has lost his grip on the political situation, as well on Zef, the half-white son he is trying to raise alone after his British wife left him to return to England. Close to being framed for the unsolved murders, miserable over his inability to accomplish anything politically, and fed up with his trouble-making child, Marcus finds solace in his rapidly accelerating relationship with Lucy.
While not as thorny as the affair between Marcus and Lucy, none of the relationships among the characters are simple. Hale weaves in island history, cultural variances, and racial identity. The characters are fully developed, and no one is all good or all bad. Even the hard-charging, self-centered Darrell is more than the stereotypical corporate husband who is such an ass that he deserves to be cheated on. Hale shows Darrell some sympathy, just as she does not shy away from the damage caused by Marcus and Lucy’s affair.
Much of this damage is inflicted on the two children in the book. Zef and Peyton, both misfits and both ignored by parents dealing with their own problems, form an uneasy alliance, based as much on loneliness and anger as friendship. The two embark on a series of pranks and misadventures that ultimately bring about the culmination of the story. There is nothing sugar-coated in the frustration and rage with which Marcus and Lucy react to their sons’ delinquent behavior. Hale’s depiction of the frayed bonds between parents and children is unblinkingly realistic.
In addition to examining these personal relationships, Hale tackles big topics like lingering racism, post-colonial politics, corporate globetrotting, child rearing, and adultery. Sometimes her ideas get a little muddled in nuance, the specifics lost in the overall atmosphere, but give her credit for aiming beyond simply an exciting plot. Lucy sums up the sort of ideas that both give the story depth and leave final conclusions vague:
We all tell ourselves stories about our lives . . . and the telling, so we think, makes them true. Our dreams are another story, and we call them lies. But dreams happen and life happens, both true stories while we’re inside them. More than one truth at the same time is paradox, and paradox, inhabited, transforms us. Always at all times there are as many truths as there are people living lives, as many dreams as dreamers.
Hale knows how to turn a phrase. But her book demonstrates more literary merit than merely elegant phrasing. She competently uses all the tools of a good writer—her characters speak with individualized voices, the dialogue is realistic, not wooden, transitions are smooth, the overall pacing is appropriate, and the loose ends get tied. These details can be hurdles in a first novel, but Hale takes them effortlessly.
It is the quality of workmanship as well as the complexity of the story that set Basil’s Dream apart. This is a first novel that deserves recognition.
Gilion Dumas is an attorney practicing in Portland, Oregon. She is a “compulsive list reader” with currently 786 books on her groaning TBR shelves. Her book notes, reviews, and reading lists can be found at her blog.
