The past asserts itself through ever more insistent letters from his mother and sisters in Guyana - the second poorest country, after Haiti, in the Western Hemisphere and a place that some might argue is its own Underworld of political burlesque and economic need, its own Sodom and Gomorrah of racial sins. That they never receive the money he sends to the village gas station. If it were not for Sonia, his Jewish-American wife, the letters would pile up unanswered in the room where he paces, mulling over the paradox of light and wishing he could disentangle himself from his roots long enough for sustained flights of scientific inquiry. The plot, or what there is of plot in this highly meditative novel, unfolds over several summer holidays in England with Warren's favorite sister, Inez. I married a good man.
Liquor cabinets fly open.
Talk alive with old times and dialect flows like rum. They want more than I can give. The reasons for the Singhs' denial of the past, ironically, lie exactly there. He is a descendant of Indian indentured laborers in the former British colonies of the Caribbean. The rum they brew muddles their children's heads and makes them slow-footed and melancholy, so they can never leave home.