Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine January 2016

BOOK REVIEW BY J. WYNNER
A Childhood Remembered
In the Castle of My Skin, by George Lamming. Longman Caribbean Writers ©1986,
24th impression 2007, 295 pages. ISBN 978-0-582-64267-6
“Rain, rain, rain… my mother put her head through the window to let the neighbours
know that I was nine, and they flattered me with the consolation that my
birthday had brought showers of blessings.”
Those blessings, though some
time percolating, manifested,
when, in 1953, two years after
his arrival in London in his
early twenties, Lamming penned
his debut novel, In the Castle of
My Skin. The book is about his
childhood experiences in his
native Barbados, between the
ages of nine and 18. It “remains
one of the most influential of
Caribbean novels,” says David
Williams of the Department of
English, Mona Campus,
University of the West Indies.
In his scholarly introduction
to the book, Williams also says
of the novel, “Lamming demands
that we acknowledge its element
as autobiography,”
although the book has a
vignette-based structure in
which other voices speak.
Though some of the tales
lag, when they take off again,
the reader is flying through
the pages with an ensemble of
characters from Creighton
village, the setting of the
novel, which takes its name
after the English landlord,
Mr. Creighton.
Readers are introduced to
every aspect of village life. You
meet the author’s childhood d friends and some of their parents (including Lamming’s
mother, who doles out floggings to her disobedient son), the bread-man, a shoemaker
and striking workers. In leading roles are Ma and Pa, the oldest residents in
the village with a wealth of community knowledge. Also, in the forefront is Mr. Slime,
once the head teacher in the village school then the village’s new boss man, though
his transition remains sketchy.
The title, In the Castle of My Skin, “is an adaptation of a line from an early poem
by St. Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott: ‘You in the castle of your skin, I the
swineherd’. Lamming’s revision of the image extends its significance beyond the
realms of racial and class privilege; in addition to its obvious reference to the position
of the Black man in a colonial society, it is also an acknowledgement of the special
loneliness conferred by the artistic imagination.”
In some passages this loneliness is sensed; the author’s shadow-like figure seems to
be in the background. It’s as if Lamming removed himself from the events around him
in order to see them more clearly. You don’t hear his voice but his presence is felt.
Another facet of Lamming’s authorship is the mix of writing styles employed in
Castle, which, throughout the story, shifts gears to suit the particular terrain that
he’s on, beginning with the birthday boy’s lyrical opening sentence.
Pa’s dream in chapter ten, in part is a historical journey back to the Middle
Passage. “The old man was talking in his sleep. But it was a strange way to talk. He
said something about light and then silver and the old woman moved to shake his
shoulder. Then the words became coherent. He was saying something in which others
were involved. She decided she wouldn’t interrupt…. I make my peace with the
Middle Passage to settle on that side of the sea the white man call a world that was
west of another world. The tribes with gods and the one tribe without we all went the
way of the white man’s money. We were for a price that had no value; we were a value
beyond any price. For the buyer and the seller ’twas no difference ’twixt these two,
price and value, value and price, since silver is solution for every ready-made sorrow.
And so ’tis today in the islands left and right of this your little island and for the village
too that’s not very important. Silver is more than what pass from hand to hand.
’Tis also a way of getting on…. I see the purchase of tribes on the silver sailing vessels,
some to Jamaica, Antigua, Grenada, some to Barbados and the island of oil and
the mountain tops….”
Lamming is very descriptive, even poetic, especially in the chapter that gives readers
a sense of place when he goes down to the sea to swim with his friends.
Sometimes he is realistic and informative. At times he is is observant narrator and
other times he switches to the playwright format.
Lamming certainly has an amalgamation of ways to move his story onward.
This book is available at local bookstores and online booksellers.
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JANUARY 2016 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 43
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