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Small Circle of Beings
Damon Galgut's first collection of stories transports us to 1980s South Africa where politics begins at home. The family - that small circle of beings where love should flourish - can be an arid and alienating territory where hatred and violence may ignite. The title novella is set in a house far out of town, at the end of a dust road that rises up into the mountains. The desperate bondage of family life is revealed to a mother as she sits at her son's bedside where he lies sick, perhaps dying. Galgut's understated prose unpicks the emotional paradoxes of family life with a surprising, surreal twist. In a world where some of the most intimate relationships are those between strangers, Small Circle of Beings describes how children must learn to pull away from their parents if they are to find their own way.
224 pages, Paperback
Published August 18, 2022
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About the author
Damon Galgut
28 books814 followersDamon Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was seventeen. His other books include Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, The Quarry, The Good Doctor and The Impostor. The Good Doctor was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Dublin/IMPAC Award. The Imposter was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He lives in Cape Town.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
July 13, 2014
A gripping collection about ordinary people living cowardly dishonest lives and the impact this has on both themselves and those around them. The longest, which lends its name to the book, is a shocking account of a couple's failure to deal with the sickness of their child. The shortest, a tale which might make one weep, about a man who fails to stand up for happiness, a point to being in the world, resigning himself to a miserable existence with an awful wife.
Rest here:
http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
Rest here:
http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
October 23, 2021
Damon Galgut's second book consists of a novella and 4 short stories. The short stories are fine, but the titular novella is the star of the collection and well worth reading for anyone interested in his early work. In the novella Galgut draws from his own childhood battle with cancer and his long recovery. I sincerely hope that is the only autobiographical aspect of the story. It is brutal and disturbing, the atmosphere claustrophobic and threatening. I found this was a very accomplished piece for such a young author.
December 23, 2023
3.5 rounded down
Thought the titular novella was good but the short stories less engaging. Definite signs of Galgut’s promise in this 1988 collection.
Thought the titular novella was good but the short stories less engaging. Definite signs of Galgut’s promise in this 1988 collection.
February 20, 2014
huge impact on small stage, the fam. in the title novella and 4 short stories galgut produces his cruel, signature boiler room feelings, of power and obeisance, at whatever cost. children beating parents, fucking parents, ripping off black people, exploiting animals both domestic and wild, manipulating landscapes, damn the consequences, fathers beating and berating wives and children, mothers torturing domestics with psychology and whips, grandmothers sadistically and gloatingly overruling the young, governments beating and stricturing people to FOLLOW THE RULES, and the rules are what we say they are. not based on god, intellect, compassion, fairness, even economic greed, but WHAT WE SAY THEY ARE. SLAP.
ahh , damon galgut, not for the demure, but explains a lot about usa, er oops, england, er oops south africa.
ahh , damon galgut, not for the demure, but explains a lot about usa, er oops, england, er oops south africa.
March 23, 2025
Damon Galgut's short story collection “Small Circle of Beings” is for the most part as good as Kafka's stories. The title story in particular, which is more of a novella in length, is a masterpiece that is in no way inferior to “The Metamorphosis” or “The Penal Colony” in its power to disturb. It is the story of a boy's illness and its effects on his family. Galgut's prose is so cold and clear that it goes right through you. I have rarely been so deeply disturbed by a completely realistic text. Galgut achieves with realism what Kafka needed surrealism for. He shakes you to the core, rips your heart out and lets you bleed to death slowly. It is an almost cruel style of storytelling if it were not guided by great empathy. Damon Galgut is one of the best writers of our time, no doubt about it.
June 15, 2021
3.5 stars. The writing is very good as always with this author, there is a very natural flow and descriptions are beautiful. Painful and moving at times, but also lacking a real driving force, a conflict or development. The longer title story is probably the best although the harsh attitude of the father and the mother are sometimes hard to believe. The other stories have a lot of elements in common with the title story. I like Clay ... least, it was too artificial for me. I struggled through the last story but fortunately continued as the end was breathtaking.
November 29, 2008
It's several stories that all revolve around dysfunctional families. Really serious stuff, but I couldn't get involved with any of the characters.
I enjoyed the writing style, though, and the descriptions.
But I spent a lot of time wondering where and when the story took place and whether or not the book was translated, because there were no contractions in dialogue and it has a formality that didn't seem natural.
I enjoyed the writing style, though, and the descriptions.
But I spent a lot of time wondering where and when the story took place and whether or not the book was translated, because there were no contractions in dialogue and it has a formality that didn't seem natural.
May 18, 2024
Excellent writing from the author’s early days. The story of the two boys and the eclipse was beautiful. All were haunting with a strong sense of family dynamics and also of place. They did make me wonder how much is autobiographical, given the common thread of awkward and isolated youth.
Usually, I either have trouble getting the point of short stories or I feel buried alive by them. This collection is one of the few that worked well for me, though the behavior portrayed in the title novella did bury me up to at least my shoulders.
Usually, I either have trouble getting the point of short stories or I feel buried alive by them. This collection is one of the few that worked well for me, though the behavior portrayed in the title novella did bury me up to at least my shoulders.
May 19, 2012
"That is our affliction, if you like. There is nothing in the world, nothing at all, which we cannot, in the end, come to accept."
An excellent compilation of short stories. Haunting and beautiful.
An excellent compilation of short stories. Haunting and beautiful.
March 16, 2013
A different kind of writing all together. Galgut brings the hidden characters of people that is not usually portrayed by other authors. A dramatic story that consists of deep feelings and complex situations.
May 30, 2022
Astute, perfect, circular, psychological, poetic, lonely, haunting and stunning. Galgut is a master. This older book of stories is no less brilliant than The Promise. It's what is under the surface that kicks in your chest.
August 6, 2014
review coming...
February 21, 2017
Depressing.
I felt for David in the first story. His mom sounds crazy from the very beginning of the story; preferring to leave the son to die than to go to town's hospital is one sign. All the characters are oppressed in one way or another, and it makes me feel like yelling 'good god, get out of that house!'.
It projects a kind of claustrophobic feeling, and I guess, since the book had an effect in me, it was written well. But It's definitely not a feel-good collection of stories.
Ps: really weirded out by 'Lovers'. Just no. Even if it's meant to be an act of kindness
I felt for David in the first story. His mom sounds crazy from the very beginning of the story; preferring to leave the son to die than to go to town's hospital is one sign. All the characters are oppressed in one way or another, and it makes me feel like yelling 'good god, get out of that house!'.
It projects a kind of claustrophobic feeling, and I guess, since the book had an effect in me, it was written well. But It's definitely not a feel-good collection of stories.
Ps: really weirded out by 'Lovers'. Just no. Even if it's meant to be an act of kindness
November 9, 2024
Read this for English, only read 3 stories. They were good but not my kinda thing. Found "Lovers" actually shocking like no way he got with her to be closer to his dad!! The "Clay Ox" was interesting cause I had no clue what was going on, and "Shadows" was probably my favourite one, really enjoyed it but felt bad for the narrator!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 11, 2018
Some beautiful writing - but not happy stories.
December 7, 2021
A very depressing collection of short stories. Love how it’s all set in South Africa, makes for a change from my normal reading
May 24, 2022
really enjoyed this - partly as a result of what I have recently being reading. Just nice to experience how a little depth and a little time can really enhance the experience of reading
December 25, 2022
Rounded up to 3.5 stars
July 16, 2024
Acute and atmospheric. I can see why it won the Booker Prize.
March 3, 2025
Beautifully written, disarming and uncomfortable short stories
July 29, 2025
“That is our affliction, if you like. There is nothing in the world, nothing at all, which we cannot, in the end, come to accept”.
June 21, 2024
THIS WAS HEART WRENCHING
BRILLIANT
“I���d imagined that ten years would make an awful racket and thunder when they finally tore apart. But it’s not the case at all. The hey fall from us gently, those years, slipping off our shoulders like sin and melting into the dark.”
GO OFF!!!!! Never married but I felt that
BRILLIANT
“I���d imagined that ten years would make an awful racket and thunder when they finally tore apart. But it’s not the case at all. The hey fall from us gently, those years, slipping off our shoulders like sin and melting into the dark.”
GO OFF!!!!! Never married but I felt that
May 28, 2016
The title story is over 110 pages long. On p.4 we're straightforwardly given information - "This is where we live. There is David and myself, and there is Stephen who is my husband". David her son is ill. She is white. Huts are nearby, where people "are as odd as their dwellings, with their flat bony faces and shiny black skin" (p.6). Her servants are Salome and Moses. Only on p.9 do we learn of her mad mother. Her mother's problem might have been passed down to her, the doctor hints. Her life-style's not ideal -
Stephen "does not get on with David. He loves him, I hasten to say - but this is perhaps the problem. Stephen doesn't know what to do with his love. He whittles it down to dry and brittle words." (p.23).
"I am selfish. I am small. My life has devolved to numberless small routines that keep me safe." (p.33).
So, she has a dying child, an unhappy marriage, and a mad mother. Furthermore, she's a white in an isolated house where the surrounding countryside is rather hostile and communities of blacks are nearby. Surely the author has sufficient ingredients for a story by now. Or will it get worse?
The mother delays the boy's treatment for no given reason but eventually, suddenly takes him to a hospital that's a 5-hour drive away. The 2 of them stay there for a while. Nobody mentions cancer. If you're scared of big needles, there are passages you'll need to skip.
Things do get worse - the husband has an affair while she's away. There's a quick divorce. She gets the house. But the child recovers and she finds a lover who moves in. He beats the boy, then the woman, who neglects the son for a while but eventually, suddenly makes the man leave. Meanwhile the husband's relationship falls through. The now grown son leaves to live with his father. The woman ends up sharing the house with her mad mother.
The shifts of affection aren't depicted. All we see are the belated decisions by apparently heartless people (or people unable to express their thought before it's too late). And there are so many pivotal events that it's easy for the author to use under-statement. There's everything except a death.
"Lovers" begins with a brief deathbed scene - James watches his old father die while his mother knits in the lounge. Then there are a few pages of memories, how James preferred his quiet father to his organised, controlling mother. He lives in a flat. He's thinking of moving back to the house now. He tidies his father's study, looking for clues. He finds old love letters from a woman his father had an affair with. After a brief description of the funeral we read how he tries to track the lover down. Once he begins to imagine himself as his father, the ending's predictable.
"Shadows" - the narrator, a schoolboy, cycles at night with his only friend, Robert, who brings 2 dogs, to a lakeside where they can watch an eclipse. Robert's popular at school. As the moon fades, the narrator skinny-dips. Robert joins him. They tussle, innocently enough. The dogs provide symbolic accompaniment. They get dressed, the moon returns, and they cycle away. One imagines that the evening will mean more to the narrator than to Robert, whose mind is partly on Emma Brown.
"The Clay Ox" - a male hitch-hiker, Guy, is picked up by a woman in a white Volkswagon beetle. He'd been sleeping rough for a while. Then there's a flashback recounting his childhood - "I lived lived among green hills and like a hummingbird had craved the sweat of flowers ... Foot before foot, wrenching the prison of the tattered soul endlessly forward, one staggers across deserts to get away.". His stepfather sounds much like the mother's lover in the title story. The woman offers to share her tent with him. She recognises him from TV as a deserter. They go for a walk in the mountains. She's a terrorist, a suicide bomber who's going to blow up soldiers the next day. She invites him to come along, then hints that they should make love.
In "Rick", Shell's a lonely boy who's made fun of at school by his older, more sociable sister. His mother's another plate-thrower, his father another quiet man. His parents send him to boarding school because they think he's too introspective. There he meets Rick. Rick's never had a friend before. Though they're together a lot, Shell abuses Rick physically and mentally. When Shell returns to his family he's detached from them.
I liked "Lovers". It has the type of parents that the other stories have, and a long walk through nature (going in and out of forests seems popular). The main character's a bit of a loner, but not, as perhaps elsewhere, a repressed, gay adolescent. Though it starts with a death, it isn't propped up by a sequence of calamities each of which could fuel a whole story. And it's short.
Stephen "does not get on with David. He loves him, I hasten to say - but this is perhaps the problem. Stephen doesn't know what to do with his love. He whittles it down to dry and brittle words." (p.23).
"I am selfish. I am small. My life has devolved to numberless small routines that keep me safe." (p.33).
So, she has a dying child, an unhappy marriage, and a mad mother. Furthermore, she's a white in an isolated house where the surrounding countryside is rather hostile and communities of blacks are nearby. Surely the author has sufficient ingredients for a story by now. Or will it get worse?
The mother delays the boy's treatment for no given reason but eventually, suddenly takes him to a hospital that's a 5-hour drive away. The 2 of them stay there for a while. Nobody mentions cancer. If you're scared of big needles, there are passages you'll need to skip.
Things do get worse - the husband has an affair while she's away. There's a quick divorce. She gets the house. But the child recovers and she finds a lover who moves in. He beats the boy, then the woman, who neglects the son for a while but eventually, suddenly makes the man leave. Meanwhile the husband's relationship falls through. The now grown son leaves to live with his father. The woman ends up sharing the house with her mad mother.
The shifts of affection aren't depicted. All we see are the belated decisions by apparently heartless people (or people unable to express their thought before it's too late). And there are so many pivotal events that it's easy for the author to use under-statement. There's everything except a death.
"Lovers" begins with a brief deathbed scene - James watches his old father die while his mother knits in the lounge. Then there are a few pages of memories, how James preferred his quiet father to his organised, controlling mother. He lives in a flat. He's thinking of moving back to the house now. He tidies his father's study, looking for clues. He finds old love letters from a woman his father had an affair with. After a brief description of the funeral we read how he tries to track the lover down. Once he begins to imagine himself as his father, the ending's predictable.
"Shadows" - the narrator, a schoolboy, cycles at night with his only friend, Robert, who brings 2 dogs, to a lakeside where they can watch an eclipse. Robert's popular at school. As the moon fades, the narrator skinny-dips. Robert joins him. They tussle, innocently enough. The dogs provide symbolic accompaniment. They get dressed, the moon returns, and they cycle away. One imagines that the evening will mean more to the narrator than to Robert, whose mind is partly on Emma Brown.
"The Clay Ox" - a male hitch-hiker, Guy, is picked up by a woman in a white Volkswagon beetle. He'd been sleeping rough for a while. Then there's a flashback recounting his childhood - "I lived lived among green hills and like a hummingbird had craved the sweat of flowers ... Foot before foot, wrenching the prison of the tattered soul endlessly forward, one staggers across deserts to get away.". His stepfather sounds much like the mother's lover in the title story. The woman offers to share her tent with him. She recognises him from TV as a deserter. They go for a walk in the mountains. She's a terrorist, a suicide bomber who's going to blow up soldiers the next day. She invites him to come along, then hints that they should make love.
In "Rick", Shell's a lonely boy who's made fun of at school by his older, more sociable sister. His mother's another plate-thrower, his father another quiet man. His parents send him to boarding school because they think he's too introspective. There he meets Rick. Rick's never had a friend before. Though they're together a lot, Shell abuses Rick physically and mentally. When Shell returns to his family he's detached from them.
I liked "Lovers". It has the type of parents that the other stories have, and a long walk through nature (going in and out of forests seems popular). The main character's a bit of a loner, but not, as perhaps elsewhere, a repressed, gay adolescent. Though it starts with a death, it isn't propped up by a sequence of calamities each of which could fuel a whole story. And it's short.
June 25, 2016
In some ways, I wish I liked that book better than I actually did. That's because it was a collection of small stories, as prosaic, as boring, as dramatic, as casual as life itself is! And I do usually like that kind of prose. I think it's an act of art to be writing about ... nothing. And yet... and yet...
'Small circles of beings' - what a great definition of a family, a union, a relationship, a non-relationship... That is what the book was about; longer and shorter stories of unions between beings. And there were some brilliant quotes and some brilliant observations. What I missed, I think, is being put more in the characters' head. In turn, we were always an observer and what was happening to the people in the stories, we only had to believe it, but we could not 'live' it, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, I felt the stories left us with too much to construct, re-construct or even (or maybe, predominantly) post-construct. I wish I could get to know the character a bit bitter.
But If you like thins kind of writing, you should still enjoy the book!
'Small circles of beings' - what a great definition of a family, a union, a relationship, a non-relationship... That is what the book was about; longer and shorter stories of unions between beings. And there were some brilliant quotes and some brilliant observations. What I missed, I think, is being put more in the characters' head. In turn, we were always an observer and what was happening to the people in the stories, we only had to believe it, but we could not 'live' it, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, I felt the stories left us with too much to construct, re-construct or even (or maybe, predominantly) post-construct. I wish I could get to know the character a bit bitter.
But If you like thins kind of writing, you should still enjoy the book!
September 20, 2022
Waiting for Cape Town libraries to buy "the promise", I decided to read one of Galgut's earlier books.
I like the writing style but did not, in all the stories, like any of the characters. The stories are mostly about dysfunctional families with a hard mother, a soft father and a resentful son.
Not very impressed, but then again I think this is his first book....
I like the writing style but did not, in all the stories, like any of the characters. The stories are mostly about dysfunctional families with a hard mother, a soft father and a resentful son.
Not very impressed, but then again I think this is his first book....
October 16, 2025
An exceptionally fine collection of short stories - I strongly recommend it to anyone - particularly if you have yet to discover what a fine writer Mr. Galgut is - but I didn't review back 2022 so I am only giving it four stars and you'll have to take recommendation on trust.
August 27, 2025
Dark, foreboding, rather bleak, a violent undercurrent throughout. But brilliantly written.
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