The Sly Company of People Who Care: A Novel Review

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The Sly Company of People Who Care: A Novel Review(3.5 stars) A reporter of cricket matches when he first came to Guyana, Rahul Bhattacharya returns again later to spend an entire year meeting new people and visiting places most outsiders never come to know. The result is a unique travel book of great originality, chock full of outlandish characters, trips to places the reader will not even have imagined, and risky adventures to the interior. Not a "novel" by any definition that I have ever read, the resulting book offers new glimpses into a lesser known part of the world, vibrantly described by a narrator who is obviously a stand-in for the author.
Though he has "fictionalized" characters' names and some events, the places, social and political history, and reports about some documented recent events in Georgetown are obviously real. The book feels like a wonderfully described diary, with events unfolding more or less at random, instead of a carefully planned and organized novel. The only character here with any real depth is the narrator, and he is constantly on the move in search of new adventures. Virtually all the other characters here live "on the edge" and speak a variety of pidgin, with the dialogue often containing vocabulary that the reader must figure out by context.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I follows the unnamed narrator as he makes the acquaintance of "Baby," who has just been released from jail after killing his partner, and who is anxious to return to his occupation as a "porknocker," someone who travels to the watery interior to pan for gold or diamonds. Before long, the narrator is traveling with him to the interior. The author fills this journey with local color--the houses on stilts, car shells "growing out of the mud, shot through with razorgrass," "run-over dogs ground into the asphalt," sandpits big enough to swallow whole villages. Part II begins as a geography lesson, then moves into political and social history, emphasizing the conflicts between those of African and East Indian descent, now the major part of the population, both groups having been brought to Guyana originally as slaves. He also spends considerable time delving into the dozens of drug war killings in and around Georgetown in 2005 - 2006, involving drug gangs under the control of Shaheed (Roger) Khan whose power was threatened by the "African Taliban." Part III gives a significant role to a woman for the first time in the book, as the narrator becomes the bewitched companion of Jankey, a seductive young woman with whom he travels, without visas, to Venezuela, a journey which leads to some new understandings about himself, her, and the political and legal realities.
The author does not include (and is, of course, under no obligation to include) information about the hard-working middle-class in Guyana, nor does he meet people who speak English as grammatically as he himself does--though there are educated Guyanese who speak grammatically, too. Many of these citizens remain in the country, working to improve it and the schooling for their children. This book is a lively account of those who live on the fringes, taking big risks and surviving any way they can. Those who are looking for a truly balanced picture of Guyana, a country of extraordinary beauty and much charm, however, will want to look elsewhere. Mary Whipple
Guyana
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