Picking this new release up at the Martin Luther King Jr Library in DC, I was a little surprised by how small and slim this volume looked. Not only does this novel only have 180 pages – making it relatively slim by today’s standards where so many novels seem to be getting longer and longer! – the pages are tiny, the line spacing is large, and so there are actually very few words on each page comparatively speaking. That said, Hamid novels increasingly tend to be short and concise, so it was not a complete surprise either, and after all, quantity is no guarantor of quality.
It was a very fast read, untaxing, and perhaps less profound that I was hoping for – though this is not meant as a criticism, just a reflection of my own expectations starting out. The premise is that white people were suddenly waking up to find they had turned dark skinned, inexplicably. Our protagonists are Anders – one of the first to wake and find he had changed – and Oona, his girlfriend; the tale is told from both their perspectives.
Anders is horrified to see himself so changed when he wakes one day. At first he thinks it is an optical illusion, but looking at himself in the mirror, his reaction is violent:
He wanted to kill the colored man who confronted him here in his home, to extinguish the life animating this other’s body, to leave nothing standing but himself, as he was before, and he slammed the side of his fist into the face, cracking it slightly, and causing the whole fitting cabinet, mirror, and all, to skew…
p5
Anders waits for things to go back to how they were before, but when that doesn’t happen, he attempts to hide, first from himself, then from other people, even pretending to be ill and taking leave from work until he can’t anymore. When he has to go out, he dresses to cover himself up as much as possible, to try to be unseen.
Anders works for a gym, and he is sure is boss dislikes him in his new, dark skinned avatar.
At work, Anders had become quieter than he used to be, less sure of how any action of his would be perceived, and it was like he had been recast as a supporting character…
p48
Hamid makes many such comments indicating how life is experienced differently by a darker skinned person and the cautions and potential risks and hazards to be managed and navigated,
he just had this sense that it was essential not to be seen as a threat, for to be seen as a threat, dark as he was, was to risk one day being obliterated
p67
After Anders, many other white people also change to become dark, and strangely, Anders reacts to their change even though he himself has also changed:
Anders wondered if the neighbors could be trusted, and it was not that they were new to him, most had been neighbors forever, but maybe he was new to them, darkened as he was, and not an Anders they had any loyalty to, not an Anders they considered Anders…
p106
Puzzingly, Hamid seems to say that the change of colour brings a change of not just one’s own perspective and other people’s perception, but deeper changes.
Apparently, the change is not just to skin colour: when Anders changed,
he was no longer recognizably himself, beyond the same rough size and shape. Even the expression in his eyes were different…
p16
When Oona sees Anders for the first time after his change, she tells him
he looked like any other person, not just another person, but a different kind of person, utterly different
p17
though different in what ways, Hamid does not make clear. And yet, clearly he is recognizably still the same person, because Oona and his father and his boss do recognise him. But Hamid also writes,
People who knew him no longer knew him.
p26
– again, unclear why, and how he has changed exactly. Hamid does express well however, the feeling of being changed and therefore different:
Anders said that he was not sure was the same person, he had begun by feeling that under the surface it was still him, who else could it be, but it was not that simple, and the way people act around you, it changes what you are, who you are…
p53
When Oona changes, Hamid tells us that she saw a stranger in the mirror, though her mother knew her at once. Oona apparently felt no sense of her proportions being any different,
although she did feel lighter in a way; darker, yes, but also lighter, less weighty, and not thinner, the weight departing not from her flesh but from something else, somewhere else, a weight from outside her, from above her maybe, that she had borne for so long, without being aware of the bearing of it, and now it was gone, as though the mass of the planet had changed subtly, and there was less gravity for people to contend with.
p121
Oona even feels she kisses Anders differently, with different lips after the change. But exactly why and how, the reader is not given clear explanation of.
Anders lives with his father who is dying, and Oona lives with her mother, who reads a lot of social media, and who is is more easily spooked than the younger people, and so begins to stockpile. Also, the mood in town was changing, there was more threat of violence, shelves were emptying, people were not on the roads as they used to be, some parties threatening other people, a sense of everyone battening down hatches. Eventually, more normality resumes a little. Anders’ father dies, and at his funeral, apparently the dead man was the
only pale person present, the only pale person left in their entire town, for there were by that point no others […] the last white man, and after that, after him, there were none.
p148
Which town is left unclear, for like in Exit West, Hamid does not specify, he just leaves it as a generic town that could be any place. This is an interesting read, but slightly unsatisfying because it glosses over so much, leaves so much unexplored, just touches on the ‘change’ without explaining any hows or even details of the change, and even the consequences of the changes are only skimmed over; the reader is not made privy to all the rules of the game. It is supposed to paint a scenario where whiteness is obliterated, but there would be so much more fall out and ramifications than this novel explores. No doubt Hamid is making some comments on how colour changes people and changes situations and changes the world, but perhaps his comments are so subtle I am not quite catching his full meaning. Perhaps I am too literal or realist a reader, but I would welcome a little less cryptic writing. That said, Hamid’s writing is always thoughtful and elegant, the long run-on sentences which are his trademark create, as always, a sense of connectivity and flow and even inevitability. So I found The Last White Man a good read, just wish there was more to it!
Recent Comments