Sunday Whiteman

by Lindsay Clarke

Hardcover. Very good condition. Signed and dedicated by author to Tom Maschler. First Ed. Page edges a little tanned. RB

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Lindsay Clarke is a British novelist. He was educated at Heath Grammar School in Halifax and at King's College Cambridge. He worked in education for many years, in Africa, America and the UK, before becoming a full-time writer. He currently lives in Somerset with his wife, Phoebe Clare, who is a ceramic artist. Clarke lectures in creative writing at Cardiff University, and teaches writing workshops in London and Bath. Four radio plays were broadcast by BBC Radio 4, and a number of his articles and reviews have been published in 'Resurgence' and 'The London Magazine.' Lindsay has one daughter from his first marriage.

His novel The Chymical Wedding, partly inspired by the life of Mary Anne Atwood, won the Whitbread Prize in 1989. Clarke's most recent novel is THE WATER THEATRE (published in September 2010 by Alma Booka), of which a review by Antonia Senior in THE TIMES of 28 August said "There is nothing small about this book. It is huge in scope, in energy, in heart...It is difficult to remember a recent book that is at once so beautiful and yet so thought provoking."

Reviews

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Austin Palmer left stale old England to teach in West Africa, driven by a hazy sense of political idealism and his desire to belong to 'the promise of the new', which he thinks he sees in the socialist leader of a newly established, post-colonial state.

But it costs him. At first, his marriage. Then, when the Party begins to suppress all opposition and he becomes involved with a young, aspiring African girl named Appaea, he begins to lose his fixed ideas on morality, as suddenly the cultural and political realities of his adopted country are revealed to him.

Sunday Whiteman was the name given to the original Christian missionaries by the bemused African natives, and Palmer certainly casts himself as something of a modern-day missionary, making futile attempts to combat the corrupt officials of the regime, as well as the innate superstitions of his new love.

But I have read this kind of thing many times before - the well-meaning expatriate with the colonialists guilt and good intentions, the morally ambivalent associates, the charismatic politician whose smile belies his ruthlessness, the ill-fated love story against a background of intrigues and cultural differences impossible to surmount.

And, for all of Clarke's obvious strengths as a writer, I have read it done much better. I liked the book, but ultimately I found Palmer just a little too earnest and not nearly interesting or rounded enough to care about him or his lost illusions.

Clarke does do a fine job of capturing the idiomatic english of the West Africans and various expatriates though, exemplified in the slogans that the locals daub their vehicles with, the best being: 'They Have Jesus Faces But Standard Intention'.

Clarke has written outstanding interpretations of Homer's two epics which I have read and greatly enjoyed, but 'Sunday Whiteman' was his first novel and it reads like one, a story from the heart, promising in places, clumsy and heavy-handed in others.

[Deborah Swift · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a massive Lindsay Clarke fan, and The Water Theatre was one of the highlights of my reading year.This one did not move me so much, perhaps because it felt slightly dated, even though the premise of the book still holds true - that our reactions to the 'problems' of Africa (or any third world country)tell us more about ourselves than the country we are observing. The descent of Austin Palmer, the english teacher, into a madness that is perhaps really sanity, is swift and believable. Not a comfortable read, but one which will get you to ask questions, about what is real, how we construct our world view, and whether civilisation is not just conditioning.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Austin Palmer and his wife Kay had come, full of dreams and aspirations, to a school deep in the rain-forest of a newly independent West African state. But things had not worked out as they had hoped. When Kay returns to England, Palmer moves away from the school compound into the nearby town of Ogun-Adoubia. Here he is confronted by a power far older than any government, and by his own inner darkness. When that confrontation is over nobody cares to talk about the Sunday Whiteman.

[Sam Davison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great writing but the ending was too woolly.