The Old Drift

I was anticipating I'd have a lot to blog about after finishing The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell, a weighty tome that tells a story about the history of Zambia, wound through with a multi-generational family saga, and ultimately flirting with science fiction. The truth is, though I found it interesting, I'm not sure I liked the book. It's not that the characters weren't likable--some were quite unlikable, but I still was able to sympathize with them and wish for their success (OK, I lost my goodwill for a couple of the men, but only in their later years; even the men I resented most were mostly likable as boys and youth). It took me some time to get into, perhaps because--after a striking preface voiced by a mosquito swarm, which returns chorus-like at transitions throughout the novel--the first section is told from the point of view of one of the early English colonizers, complete with dense language and saturated with racism. In the afterward, Serpell reveals that much of the detail comes directly from the real autobiography of Percy M. Clark. I read many books that include a family tree at the beginning, but in few does the visual impact my reading as much as this one did while I was reading The Old Drift--it captures not all, but most, of the interactions between the three focal families, and in some instances it assures the reader that characters, often in dicey circumstances, live long enough to have children. I wonder if I would have experienced the pace of the novel differently if I hadn't known who was going to survive (and, in some cases, hook up). Knowing that the author is Zambian, I was surprised that so many of the focus characters are white; some explanation for this comes from the "swarm": "This is the story of a nation--not a kingdom or a people--so it begins, of course, with a white man." It makes me wonder how Serpell would tell the story of a kingdom or a people.

Perhaps one of the elements that kept me at a bit of a remove was the lack of sentimentality--despite the many connections that are made over three-plus generations and more than a century--there is a dearth of romance. The characters are often aimless and self-deluded; even where there is drama (or even melodrama or elements of allegory--I think of the perplexing figure of Sibilla and of the Weepers), there is seldom a straightforward hero. This is a book told over time but deeply skeptical of "progress"; by its end, great changes have taken place, but the implications for individuals or the greater groups/swarms to which they may belong remain murky and up for discussion.