>>REVIEW
THE QUARRY
Damon Galgut
McClelland & Stewart, 202 pp.
A hitchhiker is picked up by a minister who is on his way to a new posting in rural South Africa. When the minister recognizes the hitchhiker as a wanted fugitive, the hitchhiker murders him and assumes his identity. When he arrives at the village, he discovers that one of his first ministerial jobs is to provide a funeral for the murdered man, who has been discovered in an abandoned quarry. The hitchhiker’s unorthodox attempts at spiritual leadership draw the attention of a local police officer, whose suspicion of the new minister culminates in a violent pursuit over the desolate veldt.
Galgut’s prose reads like a movie, a taut thriller played out against the scorched backdrop of a harsh and isolated land. The narrative is completely unsentimental, devoid of excess, and yet bursts with vivid, Dali-esque imagery: "the road went through a salt pan that was cracked like a mirror… boulders glistened occasionally from side to side with that fulsome pinkness of flesh."
The reader can feel the relentless heat and dust, as well as the tension that hums among the characters as they circle each other in a small, bleak town in the middle of nowhere. The police officer’s final pursuit of the fugitive comes as something of a relief, with abbreviated chapters and choppy sentences that mimic the frantic flight of pursuer and pursued. While the chase sequences are occasionally confusing – Galgut never gives the hitchhiker a proper name, and often uses "he" to refer to both the hitchhiker and the policeman – this confusion serves to heighten the sense of disoriented frenzy of a man intent on freedom, and another who is intent on his capture. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.