| | This is the 6th of 12 for the Book Awards Reading Challenge. William Boyd won the Whitbread Literary Award for Best First Novel and Somerset Maugham Award, 1982, both for his comic novel A Good Man in Africa.
Morgan Leafy is a low-level British diplomat assigned to a remote province of a West African country. Through unkind description and hilarious incident, Boyd delineates Morgan as the epitome of Lust, Anger, Envy, Greedy Ambition and Totally Misplaced Pride. He’ll remind readers of the deeply flawed Jim in Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim, another main character a reader likes to see get in and out of trouble. The plot is comprised of natural and man-made disasters such as lighting strikes and political unrest on top of Leafy’s personal and professional misadventures and blows to pride. The incidents end up with Morgan knowing more – just a tad more – about dealing with life’s calamities.
As for setting, Boyd was raised in Ghana, so his descriptions are stunning:
"Morgan could see the roofs stretch before him, an ochrous tin checker-board, a bilious metallic sea, the paranoiac vision of a mad town planner. Few buildings stretched higher than three storeys and most were crumbling mud-walled houses randomly clustered and packed alongside narrow pot-holed streets lined with deep purulent drains. Morgan liked to imagine the town as some immense yeast culture, left in a damp cupboard by an absent-minded lab technician, festering uncontrolled, running rampant in the ideal growing conditions."
This was first novel so there are a couple of minor misfires and perhaps changes of mind, but overall the plot’s complications will be enjoyable and credible for anybody that has worked overseas, where office life can get complicated out of nowhere and all of sudden. Those who think dips get whatever is coming to them will also be amused by the humor.
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| | Posted 3/16/2009 5:33 AM - 15 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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