FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
HOMER IN FLIGHT
by Rabindranath Maharaj
Goose Lane Editions, 232 pp.Rabindranath Maharaj's first novel about a West Indian immigrant's experiences in Canada promises a lot, but gets bogged down in its own ambition.
Homer Santokie escapes the chaos and corruption of his life in Trinidad and wings his way to a new life he envisions to be full of order and prosperity. Like many immigrants, however, he is disappointed to find that his education is unrecognized, his skills (dubious as they are) unneeded and his existence, at best, unnoticed in his dream land. In his half-hearted search for a job and the success he feels is his due, Homer is not remarkable for what he does, but rather for what he doesn't do. Things just seem to happen to him somehow, like his ill-fated marriage, without any effort made on his part at all.
Maharaj is at his strongest writing about Homer's disillusionment in the face of Canadian indifference and racism. His pointed observations about the immigrant's place in Canadian society hit the mark: "Over here racism is a sort of polite thing, not like in Trinidad. Nobody calling you nigger or coolie or names like that, but it's always inside them. Deep down." Homer's experience of Canada's polite but pervasive stereotyping is well-portrayed and, in a wonderful imaginary interview, leads him to compile his own list of "white" characteristics.
This novel aspires to cutting social commentary and, for the most part, achieves it. Where it falls short is in its lack of focus. Maharaj oscillates between social realism, comedy of manners, satire, farce and a Kafkaesque vision of the individual paralyzed by the impersonal and invisible forces of state persecution. Needless to say, this is not a mixture that holds together with much coherence.
Maharaj's skill as a writer is unquestionable, especially his flair for capturing the absurd, but this novel spends too much time struggling with itself to be truly successful.
Catherine Radimer
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