Books of the Month

'The Quarry' by Damon Galgut

SEPTEMBER 2005

I've literally just finished reading this brilliant novel, and as soon as I've written this review I'm heading for the local library to track down anything else I can find by Damon Galgut. I knew that he'd been shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for The Good Doctor, but other than that, knew nothing about this author. The Quarry has given me that sense of excitement you get when you discover a writer with a voice that really appeals. All I can say is that I hope all his other books are as good as this one.

I came across this title on EnCompass's 'mystery' list, and the description intrigued me. Here's the story, just to give you a taste. A nameless man, apparently on the run, kills a priest who's on his way to take up a new post in a South African township. The murderer hides the body in a disused quarry and assumes the dead man's identity. But how long can he evade both the local policeman, and his own conscience - especially when one of his first jobs as minister is to bury the recently discovered body of a murdered man?

What I really liked about this book was the quality of the writing. It's spare, almost barren, like the landscapes it describes, but with an ability to surprise with a turn of phrase or an effective metaphor. I knew from the very first paragraph that I was going to like it:

Then he came out of the grass at the side of the road and stood without moving. There were blisters on his feet that had come from walking and blisters in his mouth that had come from nothing, except his silence perhaps, and bristles like glass on his chin.

As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Galgut is more interested in the story as myth than as naturalistic narrative. The minister's cassock, the faded blood stains on the murderer's clothes and the local church-cum-court house take on almost symbolic status, and the relationship between murderer and victim, hunter and hunted, comes slowly to the fore. A dramatic double hunt begins when both the murderer and one of the local petty criminals who's become the chief suspect escape the town and strike out separately across the grasslands. The tense finale takes place during an eclipse of the sun, and the skilful, subtle way in which Galgut brings the tale to its conclusion does justice to it as both individual drama, and universal story.

Susan Tranter

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