The final years of the British Raj were an exercise in contradiction. There is ample evidence—on the British left, at any rate—that many were acutely aware that the British Empire was not long for this life. Imperial overstretch was not yet a phrase on anyone’s lips, but the reality of the economic racket being carried on for British benefit in India was plain, and in the late 1940s would lead to an astonishingly rapid dismantling of imperial governance. In the meantime, the Raj carried on—at once secure in the patrician role it had assumed for itself—solid as a rock until, suddenly, it wasn’t.
It is against this historical backdrop that Joanne Howard’s excellent debut novel SLEEPING IN THE SUN plays out. The action centers around Gene, the son of an American missionary about to come of age. His family, the Hintons, comprise four brothers (Gene is, for want of a better word, the runt of the litter) and their parents, who proselytize to the Indians—tolerated and outwardly accepted, more or less—who do not discriminate between them and the British. Into their midst arrives Ellis, a judge, to stay with them: an overbearing, dominating force who not only affects Gene’s parents but Arthur, too, the Indian servant who works for them.
Howard tells the story of Gene and Arthur, skillfully switching between viewpoints. Gene is that most difficult of characters, an underdog who has pluck enough to stand up when absolutely necessary, but not enough to take charge of his life. Arthur, meanwhile, bears the disillusionment of one who was impressed by the missionaries’ outward decency, but, after years of observing them in person, sees through the airs and graces to the imperfect beings they are.
The theme of life in the Empire corrupting the white men and women who dwelled in its colonies is, of course, well worn, but Howard’s take on it is vigorous and compelling. She has a good eye, too, for the pomp-filled trappings of British rule, calling them out for the swizzes they were. Howard understands only too well that organized sport—so valorized by the muscular Christians for its moralizing influence among the British working classes in the late Victorian period—was equally effective as a so-called civilizing force, and so athletic games are dismissed as “farces put on by the British.” The empire-builders do not fare much better. Ensconced in their exclusive clubs, the “dandy Brits” are very largely absent from the narrative, their built architecture (and, no doubt, their buttoned-up demeanors) “too organized [and] too neat” for 1930s India. Tension is expertly built up, and the denouement is a masterpiece of interplay between characters—erudite, elegiac, and immensely affecting. As Howard so poignantly asserts, you can’t see things that aren’t done to you.
Joanne Howard’s SLEEPING IN THE SUN tells the story of an American missionary family in British India with style and poise.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader