Springcleaning – Book 3 “The Promise” by Damon Galgut

The third book of my Springcleaning challenge for 2025 is The Promise by Damon Galgut. This book, which won the Booker Prize in 2021, was given to me by a friend who had purchased it for some reason, then remembered he didn’t read much fiction and had tried it and hadn’t got very far before giving it up. People often give me books and I accepted this gift thinking that I also might not enjoy it as it’s not a book I would ordinarily pick out for myself. As it happens I liked this book a lot and am glad I read it.

The story is set in South Africa and starts in the 1980s, moving forward to nearer the present day in four steps. It begins when Rachel, the mother of the family dies, and the father Manie and the three children gather for her funeral. Anton, the only son, has just joined the army, Astrid is exploring sex and relationships and Amor is living away from home and feels detached from the farm and its inhabitants. Rachel has returned to her Jewish roots and wants a traditional burial whilst Manie has recently converted to evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity and is fighting against it. Rachel asked Manie on her deathbed to gift a home to Salome, the woman who has cared for the family, but only Amor hears him make this promise which he promptly ignores.

We re-enter the lives of this dysfunctional family every ten years or so as one by one the main characters die. The broken promise stands for the discrimination shown to the Black inhabitants of the country and also for how the potential of each of the characters is shown to be lost and the value of their farm and family business diminishes. Each funeral involves a different faith tradition and the family separate and divide in new ways. Amor keeps emphasising the promise that was made and the family keep ignoring it. As the country changes so does the family and their priorities.

This is, in places, a funny book. It’s certainly a well-crafted one with plenty of recurring themes and minor characters whose lives are impacted by this family. The narrator also comments on what is going on and addresses the reader on occasion. I quite liked this narrative style and didn’t mind too much that this book did not include quotation marks for speech and that the point of view sometimes changed abruptly in the middle of pages. I didn’t have any trouble following what was going on and I loved the clever way that the author showed us the changes in the country and in the characters.

I am glad that I was given this book and sorry that my friend didn’t like it. My copy is in excellent condition so I’ll pass it on now to my favourite charity bookshop in the hope that they’ll find a reader for it that will enjoy it as much as I did.