Review of “Cast Out.” by Danez Smith from
The New York Times Book Review
The review of Paul Harding’s Booker Prize shortlisted novel This Other Eden, which I will review, is “Cast Out.” by Danez Smith from the New York Times Book Review. In summarizing Smith’s overall judgment of the novel and the central criteria that is raised from this review in evaluating Harding’s work, I aim to assess their conclusion that despite their initial uneasiness surrounding the almost overdone American symbolism surrounding people of color, Harding’s lyrical prose and first-person narration proved enough to overcome those apprehensions and become “…a testament of love”(Smith 2). Additionally, I will raise my examples from the novel that I feel connect with my similar feelings of apprehension at the beginning building to admiration throughout.
Smith’s review and overall judgment of the novel is a positive one – not without a fair share of grappling with the larger themes. For example, Smith remarks on the treatment of Black Americans on a literal level that this novel fictionalizers but also the idea that the way Harding chooses to depict the people of Apple Island can be unsettling. Smith writes, “…I worried their humanity would be flattened, leaving us not with any embodied story of Black people but with yet another tale about pain inflicted on black bodies…”(Smith 1). However, Smith articulates how the lyrical and melodic prose that Harding brings to this story as well as first-person narration providing agency to the characters feelings can disarm some concerns regarding the depictions of people of color. Rather than flattening those characters and their love of nature, kin, the self, and a homeland, Smith ultimately judges that Harding brings their stories alive – the beauty along with the terror (Smith 2).
For Smith, some key criteria that their judgments rest on are largely centered around Harding’s endeavor to fictionalize these real and complex Black characters of Malaga island that we have circulating in our mind as we read. Smith makes a note of the choice of symbolism and perhaps a start to the novel that might appear trite. Such as “…images of apples, the raging white of winter and tattered flags”(Smith 1). But expanding outward to the larger context of what this historical fiction contributes to the discourse on the treatment of people of color as a whole, it is a justified worry that their existence in the novel could appear trivialized. Another criterion that Smith hones in on is Harding’s stylistic choices – for instance, they describe his diction as “mesmerizing,” “poetic,” and “lush.” To Smith, these qualities of the novel aided them in working through the complicated and at times incredibly alarming plot such as the looming displacement from Apple Island, the colonialist rhetoric of the religious figures like Matthew Diamond, or the troubling bud of eugenics. As Harding doesn’t shy away from the fact that it is a true story of real people that he based this fictional work on, Smith is largely concerned with grappling with how this novel’s formal qualities, such as the diction and style of prose, contend with the potential of confining these important Black experiences to a history where they are static, studied and result in imminent catastrophe.
Moving into my analysis of Smith’s ultimate conclusion, I largely agree with their anxiety at the onset of the novel and feel that the weight of real history is pressed down on these fictionalized characters. I too wondered how – to no fault of Harding’s– a straight white man was going to take on such a powerful story of reckoning with a horrific history of racism and religious zeal. Part of Smith’s analysis that helps to assuage these concerns that I was drawn to was utilizing the text and the characters to truly appreciate the work Harding did to weave those critiques of today into a story that really must depict that era whether we feel comfortable or not. For instance, as Smith remarks on the significance of Diamond to the story they say, “… he is at once an embodiment of white supremacy and white guilt, a conduit for white power that would like to excuse himself from his responsibility in the episode of violence his well-meaning intentions made possible”(Smith 1).
Another aspect of Smith’s considerations that relates to my curiosity is the effect of knowing from the beginning of the novel that the people of Apple Island will ultimately meet a disastrous displacement. Smith makes a point that I hadn’t considered which was a lack of awareness the characters have to their fate. I might partially contest this view by pointing us to Harding’s limitations in rewriting history. The islanders are not afforded free mobility in the mainland and are physically and to some extent mentally confined to what they have experienced on the island. For example, looking into the discussions of whether Ethan can be spared from the eviction, Diamond, in representing the feelings of their society, says“…but the fact of the matter is this: more than anyone else in his family, he looks purely white”(Harding 68). With no access to the outside world and those conversations Diamond has without their knowledge, how were they to know or anticipate the signs of an impending displacement? It is a harsh reality that I feel if Harding went so far as to re-write, that would in another way diminish the real experiences he hopes to illuminate.
I also would point to those areas of the novel where Harding can subtly showcase that Esther’s character does feel something bad is looming while not overreaching in what these characters could reasonably have access to. For example, when Esther watches her grandchildren and thinks “Soon enough, Pharaoh will come after us like he always does. She thought of the Hebrews leaving Egypt, Pharaoh’s army at their heels”(Haring 81). Premonitions such as this appear throughout where we can garner that it is not completely lost on this community the dangers the outside brings to them. Today we might wonder, like Smith rightfully raises, why were these people so “unflinching”(Smith 2) or why they allow these racists and colonial powers to rip their lives apart. Nonetheless, I argue that it is precisely this frustrating and raw remembering of the realities in which these characters reside that adds to the power of portraying the depths of their love and individuality.
