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A Distant Shore
The English village is a place where people come to lick their wounds. Dorothy has walked away from a bad thirty-year marriage, an affair gone sour and a dangerous obsession. Between her visits to the doctor and the music lessons she gives to bored teenagers, she is trying to rebuild a life.
It's not immediately clear why her neighbour, Solomon, is living in the village, but his African origin suggests a complex history that is at odds with his dull routine of washing the car and making short trips to the supermarket. Though all he has in common with the English is a shared language, it soon becomes clear that Solomon hopes that his new country will provide him with a safe haven. Gradually they establish a form of comfort in each other's presence that alleviates the isolation they both feel.
It's not immediately clear why her neighbour, Solomon, is living in the village, but his African origin suggests a complex history that is at odds with his dull routine of washing the car and making short trips to the supermarket. Though all he has in common with the English is a shared language, it soon becomes clear that Solomon hopes that his new country will provide him with a safe haven. Gradually they establish a form of comfort in each other's presence that alleviates the isolation they both feel.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
38 people are currently reading
747 people want to read
About the author
Caryl Phillips
52 books215 followers Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts and came to Britain at the age of four months. He grew up in Leeds, and studied English Literature at Oxford University.
He began writing for the theatre and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S.Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), In the Falling Snow (2009), The Lost Child (2015), A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018) and Another Man in the Street (2025). His non-fiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001), Foreigners (2007), and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies: Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond the Margins Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India, and the United States, and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002-3 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently Professor of English at Yale University. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford University.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and The New Republic, his most recent book is, Another Man in the Street.
(taken from carylphillips.com official web site)
He began writing for the theatre and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S.Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), In the Falling Snow (2009), The Lost Child (2015), A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018) and Another Man in the Street (2025). His non-fiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001), Foreigners (2007), and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies: Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond the Margins Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India, and the United States, and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002-3 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently Professor of English at Yale University. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford University.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and The New Republic, his most recent book is, Another Man in the Street.
(taken from carylphillips.com official web site)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews
August 1, 2020
I can see now why people were marching for George Floyd in England. This book was an eye opener. It was published in 2003 and the picture it paints of the immigrant experience is harrowing. I have a number of reservations about the book’s structure and methods. But in terms of the subject matter there can be no quibbling. The book is based on the grim reality of racism in England. Caryl Phillips is a wonderful writer. I happily recommend this novel, but don’t start your literary journey with Phillips here. Begin perhaps with the superb Cambridge, or The Atlantic Sound—a travelogue and inquiry into slavery and the African diaspora. I’m reading the oeuvre. Next up Crossing the River.
March 6, 2013
"England has changed. These days it's difficult to tell who's from round here and who's not. Who belongs and who's a stranger. It's disturbing. It doesn't feel right."
Dorothy, a retired schoolteacher. She sounds like a bigot. Especially when just two pages later she says she retired when the grammar school where she taught music went comprehensive. "I was suddenly asked to teach whoever came into the school-we all were. Difficult kids I don't mind, but I draw the line at yobs."
Oh but Dorothy, Dorothy. What's wrong Dorothy? Something is off-kilter, skewed. Aren't you the one who does not belong? There are grains of gritty sand in the smooth honey of your story. You call this 'our village', but you only moved here three months ago. This idyllic English village is a nightmare. This doctor you're seeing, what kind of complaint do you have? Your narrative is unsettling, disturbing; nothing fits. You are the stranger. You are a stranger to yourself. You tell a story, but there is a discord, there are wrong notes. It does not belong to you. You do not belong here. When and where did you part company from yourself?
Solomon does not belong here either. He is not allowed to belong. He would like to. He tries, tender green shoots slowly unfurl. They are blasted, poisoned.
Gabriel has had his life cut. The end. Violent brutality, the horror of his family savagely murdered in front of his eyes. But he survives, he has to survive, there is nothing else for him to do. An appalling journey brings him to England as an illegal, where he will be safe. Won't he? This is not a country at war. Asylum. Gabriel becomes Solomon, like in the bible. He is a man burdened with hidden history. He needs to share it, if he doesn't then he has only the one year since he came to England. A one year old man walks over to Dorothy's door and knocks. She's a respectable woman. She might listen.
Out there is a cruel place.
And it's all out there.
Everywhere.
Asylum.
Masterful. Controlled. Uncanny. Compassionate. Bleak. Moving.
Dorothy, a retired schoolteacher. She sounds like a bigot. Especially when just two pages later she says she retired when the grammar school where she taught music went comprehensive. "I was suddenly asked to teach whoever came into the school-we all were. Difficult kids I don't mind, but I draw the line at yobs."
Oh but Dorothy, Dorothy. What's wrong Dorothy? Something is off-kilter, skewed. Aren't you the one who does not belong? There are grains of gritty sand in the smooth honey of your story. You call this 'our village', but you only moved here three months ago. This idyllic English village is a nightmare. This doctor you're seeing, what kind of complaint do you have? Your narrative is unsettling, disturbing; nothing fits. You are the stranger. You are a stranger to yourself. You tell a story, but there is a discord, there are wrong notes. It does not belong to you. You do not belong here. When and where did you part company from yourself?
Solomon does not belong here either. He is not allowed to belong. He would like to. He tries, tender green shoots slowly unfurl. They are blasted, poisoned.
Gabriel has had his life cut. The end. Violent brutality, the horror of his family savagely murdered in front of his eyes. But he survives, he has to survive, there is nothing else for him to do. An appalling journey brings him to England as an illegal, where he will be safe. Won't he? This is not a country at war. Asylum. Gabriel becomes Solomon, like in the bible. He is a man burdened with hidden history. He needs to share it, if he doesn't then he has only the one year since he came to England. A one year old man walks over to Dorothy's door and knocks. She's a respectable woman. She might listen.
Out there is a cruel place.
And it's all out there.
Everywhere.
Asylum.
Masterful. Controlled. Uncanny. Compassionate. Bleak. Moving.
May 8, 2024
Emotional and raw
Usually, I find experimental narratives hard to follow and pointless. However, this book is an example of how an unorthodox narrative structure can make a story better. I felt that I learned about the characters through their experiences rather than just their names. Also, the parallel stories of Dorothy and Gabriel/Solomon were beautiful but real.
Usually, I find experimental narratives hard to follow and pointless. However, this book is an example of how an unorthodox narrative structure can make a story better. I felt that I learned about the characters through their experiences rather than just their names. Also, the parallel stories of Dorothy and Gabriel/Solomon were beautiful but real.
February 12, 2008
This book was just simply stunning. The prose was superb, the stories tragic. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys finely-written literature. Many readers may not like the structure of this novel, nor the fact that the story is told in almost flashback like format; it took me a little while to figure out that time is not linear in the novel.
A brief synopsis:
Set in England, there are two main characters in this novel. One is Dorothy who is in her fifties, and has retired from teaching music. She has just moved into a new housing development. She gives private lessons, but even that ends after the girl she is teaching quits. Once in a while Dorothy gets out of the house to go visit the local pub, and to make visits to a "specialist," from whom she seeks help for sleeplessness. This puts her into contact with Solomon, who volunteers as a driver through the local hospital, and who is sort of a jack of all trades as well as a watchman in the housing development in which Dorothy lives. He senses Dorothy's loneliness and tries to talk to her, but the place in which they both live is filled with people who have nothing better to do than to spread talk and watch what goes on so the two never really quite connect on any kind of in-depth level.
The story underlying the eventual fates of the two characters, as I noted, is told in flashback, switching back and forth between the stories of Dorothy and Solomon. While the stories are vastly different, they have one common meeting point: both are set in a society that doesn't work for either character. Solomon arrives as a refugee from war in Africa, and fails to understand the country and its people who only want to accuse him and rip him off and deal with him with prejudice. Dorothy remarks often about how England has changed -- she remembers the days when children were interested and wanted to learn and when life was simpler; when human responses to one another were just that.
Solomon has his own demons as well, beginning back in his native country. Eventually he makes his way to England entering illegally, and the first thing he knows he is sharing a prison cell with an Iraqi who is dying and nobody seems to care.
Both Dorothy and Solomon have what the other needs or what the other sees as a solution to belonging to a system that doesn't want them or which discards them, but tragically they never realize it. They are set apart by society and can never reach out to each other.
Obviously this is a very quick, nutshell synopsis, but the book is outstanding and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
A brief synopsis:
Set in England, there are two main characters in this novel. One is Dorothy who is in her fifties, and has retired from teaching music. She has just moved into a new housing development. She gives private lessons, but even that ends after the girl she is teaching quits. Once in a while Dorothy gets out of the house to go visit the local pub, and to make visits to a "specialist," from whom she seeks help for sleeplessness. This puts her into contact with Solomon, who volunteers as a driver through the local hospital, and who is sort of a jack of all trades as well as a watchman in the housing development in which Dorothy lives. He senses Dorothy's loneliness and tries to talk to her, but the place in which they both live is filled with people who have nothing better to do than to spread talk and watch what goes on so the two never really quite connect on any kind of in-depth level.
The story underlying the eventual fates of the two characters, as I noted, is told in flashback, switching back and forth between the stories of Dorothy and Solomon. While the stories are vastly different, they have one common meeting point: both are set in a society that doesn't work for either character. Solomon arrives as a refugee from war in Africa, and fails to understand the country and its people who only want to accuse him and rip him off and deal with him with prejudice. Dorothy remarks often about how England has changed -- she remembers the days when children were interested and wanted to learn and when life was simpler; when human responses to one another were just that.
Solomon has his own demons as well, beginning back in his native country. Eventually he makes his way to England entering illegally, and the first thing he knows he is sharing a prison cell with an Iraqi who is dying and nobody seems to care.
Both Dorothy and Solomon have what the other needs or what the other sees as a solution to belonging to a system that doesn't want them or which discards them, but tragically they never realize it. They are set apart by society and can never reach out to each other.
Obviously this is a very quick, nutshell synopsis, but the book is outstanding and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
April 3, 2011
I’ve read a few of his books, and although he’s not the most refined of writers, one thing that Caryl Phillips can do is tell a story. This story is one of two people, both lonely and exist largely outside the mainstream of society. One is a retired teacher and the other an African refugee.
Stylistically, the book's sections jump between the perspectives of the two main characters, and the story is relayed in a non-linear, broken fashion, so the reader is often caught on the back foot in terms of the narrative. This isn’t too frustrating, although the emerging fact that one of the central characters – who increasingly narrates in the first person – is unreliable, throws in a bit of a twist.
Most novels of this kind would construct their story around the relationships between the two characters. This one is a little different, as it is largely built around the lack of a relationship between the two main characters. Much of the interest – and indeed the novel’s central theme – is around the concept of isolation, and the fact that two – ‘Soloman’ and Dorothy – are desperately isolated, yet convention and manners compel them to maintain the formality of distance between each other, despite their interest and intentions.
In Solomon, Phillips has constructed a character that has shut down much of his emotional repertoire after his experience of civil war and hardship. For very different reasons, Dorothy’s life has led her down a path of emotional disengagement, isolation and mental illness.
Part of the real craft of this book is how the most brutal aspect of the novel is actually loneliness. Despite the terrible things that he has seen, loneliness that was the thing that Solomon notices most in England:
"It is strange, but nobody is looking at anybody else, and it would appear that not only are these people all strangers to one another, but they seem determined to make sure that this situation will remain unchanged."
Moreover, any one way that we might know someone is bound to be erroneous; in the sense that identities are interlaced assemblages of experiences, often traumatic, that defy a single, settled view; especially when survival often requires leaving them behind.
I think that I enjoyed – which is the wrong word entirely, but I can’t think of a better one – this novel so much because of the way that it breaks down the distinction between the ‘placed’ and the ‘displaced’. It explores (without seeming trite or forced), our sense of security and – if you’re lucky enough to have had one – about safely ‘belonging’.
Phillips seems to say, whether we know it or not, that ‘we are all adrift’. What is more, this aimlessness is not a product of ‘race’, ‘nationality’ or ‘geography’, but of the human condition itself. Please, do not read this book if you're looking for a light, upbeat little pick-me-up. However, if you’re up for an emotional wrench and a thoughtful mediation on alienation in modern society, this is the book for you!
Stylistically, the book's sections jump between the perspectives of the two main characters, and the story is relayed in a non-linear, broken fashion, so the reader is often caught on the back foot in terms of the narrative. This isn’t too frustrating, although the emerging fact that one of the central characters – who increasingly narrates in the first person – is unreliable, throws in a bit of a twist.
Most novels of this kind would construct their story around the relationships between the two characters. This one is a little different, as it is largely built around the lack of a relationship between the two main characters. Much of the interest – and indeed the novel’s central theme – is around the concept of isolation, and the fact that two – ‘Soloman’ and Dorothy – are desperately isolated, yet convention and manners compel them to maintain the formality of distance between each other, despite their interest and intentions.
In Solomon, Phillips has constructed a character that has shut down much of his emotional repertoire after his experience of civil war and hardship. For very different reasons, Dorothy’s life has led her down a path of emotional disengagement, isolation and mental illness.
Part of the real craft of this book is how the most brutal aspect of the novel is actually loneliness. Despite the terrible things that he has seen, loneliness that was the thing that Solomon notices most in England:
"It is strange, but nobody is looking at anybody else, and it would appear that not only are these people all strangers to one another, but they seem determined to make sure that this situation will remain unchanged."
Moreover, any one way that we might know someone is bound to be erroneous; in the sense that identities are interlaced assemblages of experiences, often traumatic, that defy a single, settled view; especially when survival often requires leaving them behind.
I think that I enjoyed – which is the wrong word entirely, but I can’t think of a better one – this novel so much because of the way that it breaks down the distinction between the ‘placed’ and the ‘displaced’. It explores (without seeming trite or forced), our sense of security and – if you’re lucky enough to have had one – about safely ‘belonging’.
Phillips seems to say, whether we know it or not, that ‘we are all adrift’. What is more, this aimlessness is not a product of ‘race’, ‘nationality’ or ‘geography’, but of the human condition itself. Please, do not read this book if you're looking for a light, upbeat little pick-me-up. However, if you’re up for an emotional wrench and a thoughtful mediation on alienation in modern society, this is the book for you!
June 16, 2009
This book tells the story of two people whose lives follow very different paths but ultimately intersect. One an African illegal immigrant to Britain and the other a middle class sheltered English divorcee. One decends into madness and the other losses their life, so its far from a happy fairy tale. But the author is a skilled story teller and the book is populated with believable characters of all sorts with many engaging subplots and background stories. I found the Africans story a bit more compelling of the two perhaps because the St Kitts born author who now resides in England may have had a more natural affinity for the struggles of a recent immigrant. But the English womans familial struggles were also richly detailed. A very good book that examines the unitended consequences of sometimes violent culture clash.
August 18, 2017
This book was wonderful and it's only one quibble that keep it from being 5 stars in my book.
A Distant Shore is about two unlikely characters who have a brief meeting and have an unlikely friendship. Dorothy is a retired school teacher in England who is trying to sort out what to do with her time after taking early retirement, being divorced and not having any family left. She meets the nightwatchman and handy man in her new neighborhood named Solomon who is a recent immigrant from a war torn African country.
This is a book about loneliness, culture shock, and the difficulty surrounding making meaningful friendships as adults and with people who are vastly different than you. I loved how this book portrayed their awkward friendship. It reminded me of the times in college when I struggled to connect with international students beyond pleasantries. I always felt like such a failure, but it shows that making friends who are from different cultures isn't as simple as "hey let's try each other's food". It runs much deeper.
As this book moves back and forth in time between the two characters lives, it shows many tragedies but the biggest of all is loneliness and the inability to find personal fulfillment in your community. I loved how Phillips deconstructed the dream many immigrants have of moving to England or the United States and having a much better life. He explores the disappointments and the struggles of transitioning in a very poignant way.
My only complaint about this was the fact that the author never named the country Solomon was from, and just used "Africa." If he was going to go through all of that detail, why not pick a country and research a recent conflict? Africa is a continent not a country.
Read this book. It's great on a number of levels I didn't even get into here just for spoilers sake.
A Distant Shore is about two unlikely characters who have a brief meeting and have an unlikely friendship. Dorothy is a retired school teacher in England who is trying to sort out what to do with her time after taking early retirement, being divorced and not having any family left. She meets the nightwatchman and handy man in her new neighborhood named Solomon who is a recent immigrant from a war torn African country.
This is a book about loneliness, culture shock, and the difficulty surrounding making meaningful friendships as adults and with people who are vastly different than you. I loved how this book portrayed their awkward friendship. It reminded me of the times in college when I struggled to connect with international students beyond pleasantries. I always felt like such a failure, but it shows that making friends who are from different cultures isn't as simple as "hey let's try each other's food". It runs much deeper.
As this book moves back and forth in time between the two characters lives, it shows many tragedies but the biggest of all is loneliness and the inability to find personal fulfillment in your community. I loved how Phillips deconstructed the dream many immigrants have of moving to England or the United States and having a much better life. He explores the disappointments and the struggles of transitioning in a very poignant way.
My only complaint about this was the fact that the author never named the country Solomon was from, and just used "Africa." If he was going to go through all of that detail, why not pick a country and research a recent conflict? Africa is a continent not a country.
Read this book. It's great on a number of levels I didn't even get into here just for spoilers sake.
March 13, 2013
Read this for my Transnational Fiction grad seminar. I APPRECIATE this book, but did not enjoy reading it. It shifts narrative perspective and tense too many times for my beleaguered brain to handle (which, I get it, is commentary on dislocation and the transnational/migrant experience). I found the female protagonist to be insufferable, and while I don't think I need to like a character in order to care about her story, this was certainly the case with this novel.
March 13, 2025
The first two chapters are awful, not only disturbing but tiresome and dragging. Fortunately the narrative becomes increasingly engaging although it remains wearisome to some extent. The content, however, is enthralling. The refugee story, the engagement with mental illness, the theme of isolation.... if only the narrative style demanded more from the reader from the beginning making it a less passive read, it would have been a much more effective novel.
February 28, 2025
I really enjoyed the way this was written and I liked both perspectives. It took me a bit longer to get into Gabriel’s perspective just because it was not what I was expecting. Gabriel’s story developed a lot more pleasingly than Dorothy’s and I sometimes struggled to understand where in her story I was because it was so non linear.
Nevertheless despite not going to my seminar for this book I am glad I’ve finished it and it is a very well written, interesting and still relevant story!
Nevertheless despite not going to my seminar for this book I am glad I’ve finished it and it is a very well written, interesting and still relevant story!
October 26, 2015
An elaborate character study, with fluid prose and cunning subtext, A Distant Shore is a powerful book. A brief friendship between a repressed English schoolmarm with issues and an immigrant man fleeing his country after a bloody war, triggers the flashback - first Dorothy, then the man called Solomon. They're neither of them simple, neither of them wonderful. Much is left unsaid, but it is not so vague as to be opaque. It is also a critique on society, of England's (or more correctly, universal) shunning of outcasts and misfits.
It is well written, the non-linear narrative is done well enough and I could follow the shifts well enough. I admired it a lot, but I don't unconditionally love it - for reasons that have to do with the kind of story it is, of alienation, of unlikable characters, of situations where anything would have worked better than what is employed by the characters - but I'm glad to have read it.
Edit: Another teacher's story made the Booker shortlist in 2003, Notes on a Scandal. I liked that book too, but I preferred Shore.
It is well written, the non-linear narrative is done well enough and I could follow the shifts well enough. I admired it a lot, but I don't unconditionally love it - for reasons that have to do with the kind of story it is, of alienation, of unlikable characters, of situations where anything would have worked better than what is employed by the characters - but I'm glad to have read it.
Edit: Another teacher's story made the Booker shortlist in 2003, Notes on a Scandal. I liked that book too, but I preferred Shore.
June 11, 2009
I found this book good to start but then it really lost it's way. The story started a little backwards, as it starts close to the present day telling you about the relationship between the two main characters, then went on later to give you a more in depth background to them.
Solomon had a really harrowing life, and was caught up in war in his home country in Africa, and experienced some really tough times in his life. It was amazing he turned out so nice!
The book really lost it's way, and I didn't get the final section at all. I felt I had to finish it though as it was this months Hartwell WI book club read.
Why can;t we choose a book without murder and mistreatment in for our book club for a change??
Solomon had a really harrowing life, and was caught up in war in his home country in Africa, and experienced some really tough times in his life. It was amazing he turned out so nice!
The book really lost it's way, and I didn't get the final section at all. I felt I had to finish it though as it was this months Hartwell WI book club read.
Why can;t we choose a book without murder and mistreatment in for our book club for a change??
July 29, 2015
I wanted to really like this book. The shifts from different time periods and perspective were often not clear to me and I found myself catching on a few sentences in.
I stuck with it because I needed to see if and how the characters were going to tie together.
I probably enjoyed the section with Solomon meeting and living with the Anderson's the best.
I stuck with it because I needed to see if and how the characters were going to tie together.
I probably enjoyed the section with Solomon meeting and living with the Anderson's the best.
March 16, 2011
about a retired black professor in england. unbelievable, quiet, smooth-river prose. this won so many awards its not funny. his new book of essays comes out in may 2011
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
July 1, 2012
meh - I felt like the non-linear narration distracted from rather than enhanced the story. Had trouble sympathizing with either of the main characters - she's obnoxious and crazy and he's relatively passive while all kinds of bad things happen to him.
Want to read
September 29, 2010NO
December 7, 2013
What a pleasant surprise this book turned out to be.
March 23, 2013
Really a 4.5/5
June 13, 2013
Captivating.
October 27, 2013
Didn't wow me.
July 22, 2017
Didn't like it. Was so dry and dense to get into.
Read for ENGL 3235: Contemporary English Literature
Read for ENGL 3235: Contemporary English Literature
March 12, 2018
Started out okay but got pretty dull. I'd heard good things about this author. This was my first of his books, but it didn't make me want to read more.
September 2, 2019
some parts of this book are really, really incredible.
lots of poignant, sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeful narratives weaved together in a manner that is at once lucid and hazy. other parts i found lost their way a bit and the narrative style could have been a tiny bit tighter to pull it all together.
4.5 stars
lots of poignant, sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeful narratives weaved together in a manner that is at once lucid and hazy. other parts i found lost their way a bit and the narrative style could have been a tiny bit tighter to pull it all together.
4.5 stars
May 9, 2018
The first few pages were a bit slow, but overall I really liked this novel. There is a lot of sadness and loneliness in this book, and not much happiness, but it's well written and engages well with the topics of migration, fear, the unknown, life-changing events, rejection, and racism.
October 17, 2017
I really luv Caryl's imagery and that's one of the reasons i keep reading on. Some of my favourites images:
"beneath the boy's waistline desire is leaping like a trout"
"ensnared in a single twist of cotton sheeting"
"as night begins to bleed slowly through the night sky"
"with the surf printing its pattern like lace against the sand
And my favourite quote from this book "Joy was an emotion which soared on wings, which suggested transcendence"
Then there is this author's uncanny, web like approach, where we are drawn into his story, with sips of simple issues, sudden chops in the story-line, and the intrigue of leaving us wanting to know more, more. The greater part of the narrative is through dreams and semiconscious states. Spliced in. And it's in these flashback states, that the real action of the novel is unreeled.
"England has changed" [opening line] and so has Dorothy. Retired, divorced, engaged in a vicarious romance with her neighbour, (Solomon - an undernourished coloured man in the small bungalow next door) whom she muses throughout the novel, is her friend.
We meet these two together as he drives her to the hospital. Wearing his gloves and holding firmly to the steering wheel, making her feel very safe.
Solomon is the one who introduces us to her:
"You have to start planning a new life Dorothy. Your sister has gone, but you're still a relatively young woman, and there's nothing wrong with you physically."
She is a very criticizing kind of person. Her thoughts about some persons:
the "vulgar woman in the post office" who describes StoneLeigh newcomers as posh so-and-sos.
She doesn't like the way Solomon flaunts washing his car and enjoying his music.She doesn't like her ex-husbands "ugly shoes" when he comes to visit her in the "unit"
And their dinners [the hospital's] are childish.
She is a practical rather than a spiritual person. She muses about the stone church as "wouldn't be needing to go there, the pub however to her is sanctuary . And she visits the Burial Grounds to sit and talk to her dead parents.
There is so much more to Dorothy than when we first meet her. Her story proves to be intriguing, full of spice, full of failed relationships, full of personal losses.
She looses her mother, her father, her husband, her lovers, her friend, her sister, her unwilling piano student, her sense of reality. Its seem as though everything teases then slips out of her life. She summarily confesses to Mahmood her Asian lover that his is a life of passion, betrayal, migration, sacrifice and triumph, but hers is one of abandonment.
After Shelia (her sister) dies, she writes to herself, pretending it is Shelia doing the writing.
"But Solomon is different " Dorothy muses. And here again, is Caryl's craft as author at work. Handing us a smooth stone which has been really so rough and weathered.
"No, I am from Africa...Gabriel thinks for a moment and then remembers what Katherine told him. Solomon he says. My name is Solomon". "Like in the Bible" Mike asks Gabriel nods. Yes, of course. Something like that.
And here the author serves up a huge dish of kindness in Anderson's, to become Solomon's guardian angels .
Throughout the novel i get the feeling that Dorothy is sharing her thoughts rather than narrating her story. And my feeling is finally confirmed when she muses " I will be as purposefully silent as a bird in flight"
The ending of the book for me was confusing.
"I will ease myself out of the bed and proceed to put on my day face"
And i'm left with the question: is she planning to run away from the hospital or is she just thinking about freshening up. Caryl surely throws me a curve ball to end.
"beneath the boy's waistline desire is leaping like a trout"
"ensnared in a single twist of cotton sheeting"
"as night begins to bleed slowly through the night sky"
"with the surf printing its pattern like lace against the sand
And my favourite quote from this book "Joy was an emotion which soared on wings, which suggested transcendence"
Then there is this author's uncanny, web like approach, where we are drawn into his story, with sips of simple issues, sudden chops in the story-line, and the intrigue of leaving us wanting to know more, more. The greater part of the narrative is through dreams and semiconscious states. Spliced in. And it's in these flashback states, that the real action of the novel is unreeled.
"England has changed" [opening line] and so has Dorothy. Retired, divorced, engaged in a vicarious romance with her neighbour, (Solomon - an undernourished coloured man in the small bungalow next door) whom she muses throughout the novel, is her friend.
We meet these two together as he drives her to the hospital. Wearing his gloves and holding firmly to the steering wheel, making her feel very safe.
Solomon is the one who introduces us to her:
"You have to start planning a new life Dorothy. Your sister has gone, but you're still a relatively young woman, and there's nothing wrong with you physically."
She is a very criticizing kind of person. Her thoughts about some persons:
the "vulgar woman in the post office" who describes StoneLeigh newcomers as posh so-and-sos.
She doesn't like the way Solomon flaunts washing his car and enjoying his music.She doesn't like her ex-husbands "ugly shoes" when he comes to visit her in the "unit"
And their dinners [the hospital's] are childish.
She is a practical rather than a spiritual person. She muses about the stone church as "wouldn't be needing to go there, the pub however to her is sanctuary . And she visits the Burial Grounds to sit and talk to her dead parents.
There is so much more to Dorothy than when we first meet her. Her story proves to be intriguing, full of spice, full of failed relationships, full of personal losses.
She looses her mother, her father, her husband, her lovers, her friend, her sister, her unwilling piano student, her sense of reality. Its seem as though everything teases then slips out of her life. She summarily confesses to Mahmood her Asian lover that his is a life of passion, betrayal, migration, sacrifice and triumph, but hers is one of abandonment.
After Shelia (her sister) dies, she writes to herself, pretending it is Shelia doing the writing.
"But Solomon is different " Dorothy muses. And here again, is Caryl's craft as author at work. Handing us a smooth stone which has been really so rough and weathered.
"No, I am from Africa...Gabriel thinks for a moment and then remembers what Katherine told him. Solomon he says. My name is Solomon". "Like in the Bible" Mike asks Gabriel nods. Yes, of course. Something like that.
And here the author serves up a huge dish of kindness in Anderson's, to become Solomon's guardian angels .
Throughout the novel i get the feeling that Dorothy is sharing her thoughts rather than narrating her story. And my feeling is finally confirmed when she muses " I will be as purposefully silent as a bird in flight"
The ending of the book for me was confusing.
"I will ease myself out of the bed and proceed to put on my day face"
And i'm left with the question: is she planning to run away from the hospital or is she just thinking about freshening up. Caryl surely throws me a curve ball to end.
Read
April 21, 2018I liked that this starts off as Dorothy's story, and then migrates to include Solomon's. Very well written, and although bleak, lonely, and depressing it contained elements of hope and reassurance that there is someone out there who understands, even if their experiences aren't entirely the same.
January 22, 2013
A Distant Shore is a cleverly written novel which tells the story of two people who, in all fairness, couldn't be any more different, but who finally find something in each other, after the awful trials and tribulations they have suffered throughout their lives. The author writes with deceptive simplicity; the prose is far from ornate, but its matter-of-fact manner is effective, and strikes a chord with the reader.
The novel is structured in a somewhat different fashion, beginning with what perhaps could be described as the dénouement, before taking the reader back through the characters' histories in a series of flash-backs. The narrative is sprawling, jumping from one perspective to the next as we see that their is much more to Solomon; the quiet, well-mannered man who takes care of his car with unfaltering resolve.
Caryl Phillips writes of a small English village, out of the way, which seems peaceful and quaint. Yet as the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that even out here village politics, affairs and prejudices are rife. Slowly, Phillips reveals to us the events surrounding Solomon's and Dorothy's arrivals in Stoneleigh, the new housing development on the hill; the place in which those have come to escape their demons.
A Distant Shore is a tale of death, obsession, and deception. The author explores prejudice, discrimination; a man's impossible fight to rid himself of the past, and woman's steady frustration as people begin to misunderstand her motives. Phillips cleverly weaves together the lives of our two main characters, creating a beautiful exploration of human emotion; which, if all the pieces of the puzzle weren't slotted into place perfectly, would definitely have left me wanting more.
November 10, 2009
This book has two protagonists: an Englishwoman who has retired as a music teacher and moved to a new housing development, and the African man who has been hired as a caretaker and night-watchman. Solomon offers to drive Dorothy to her doctor appointments and the two, very warily, become friends, or at least the closest thing to a friend that either of them has. Yet the bulk of the book is devoted to showing us how neither of these people is who they seem to be. Dorothy is more daring and troubled than any of her neighbors could guess, and Solomon (whose real name is Gabriel) has escaped an unnamed African country after witnessing the murder of his family and after himself joining a group of government fighters who use drugs to dull their senses as they attack villages suspected of aiding the rebels. In one brilliant hundred-page passage, Phillips shows the world Gabriel left behind, his harrowing voyage through Europe, and entry into England; allows the reader to see the streets of London through his eyes; and shows Gabriel's impulsive anger and terror at not being able to tell friend from foe in this new environment. The book is not flawless--Phillips writes far more convincingly of the African man than he does of an older Englishwoman--but he has the skill to make the fleeting friendship between the two matter, and to make the reader feel the tragedy of how close they came to saving each other. At times, the book is brutal, but no more brutal than the world that inspired it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 21, 2009
In a small English village, Dorothy Jones lives next door to Solomon in a new development. Dorothy is a lonely, divorced retiree who is having some psychological problems. Solomon is the development’s watchman. He is an immigrant from an unnamed African country, and he volunteers to drive Dorothy to the doctor in town.
Told in a non-linear fashion, this is really two stories: how Dorothy and Solomon came to their present circumstances. And their individual stories are strikingly similar to two other novels I have read. Dorothy’s story reminds me of What was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal) by Zoë Heller. Solomon’s story reminds me of What is the What by Dave Eggers. Frankly, I’d recommend reading these two novels instead of A Distant Shore.
Told in a non-linear fashion, this is really two stories: how Dorothy and Solomon came to their present circumstances. And their individual stories are strikingly similar to two other novels I have read. Dorothy’s story reminds me of What was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal) by Zoë Heller. Solomon’s story reminds me of What is the What by Dave Eggers. Frankly, I’d recommend reading these two novels instead of A Distant Shore.
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