Cambridge ~ Caryl Phillips

 I was surprised how well this afternoon's discussion of  Caryl Phillips' 1991 novel, Cambridge, went because I didn't think I had prepared throughly enough.  We ranged over far too many topics to consider here, shifting our way through his development of themes, style and character development.  However, what I found myself most interested in as my thoughts were clarified by other people's comments, was his use of the written first person format for the main sections of the text.

The book tells the story of Emily, the daughter of the owner of a failing West Indian sugar planation and of Cambridge, one of the workers on her father's land.  In terms of interaction their paths hardly cross, they are most closely linked by the light their histories shed on the themes of identity, displacement and migration, but I was most fascinated by Phillips choice to have them tell their stories in the form of written narrative.  The first two thirds of the book consists of Emily's journal, while the bulk of the remainder is Cambridge's life story written on the eve of his execution.  Some of the events about which they write are shared and it is this fact that throws light on the way in which a written narrative is more likely than the spoken form to be shaped to suit the needs of the writer.  The opportunity to take time to consider what is written, to go back over it and re-edit means that the author of the text can choose what to communicate and have greater control over tone and emphasis.  With Cambridge's narrative coming second we are perhaps most conscious of those things that Emily has chosen not to tell us but which he sees no reason to conceal.  However, the very fact that he has cast doubt on the completeness of her truth causes the reader to question also what Cambridge has chosen to omit or to show in a different slant of light.  We are forced to consider how reliable either one of them might be as a narrator.

Who writes the history and how they shade it to suit their own purpose is one of Phillips major concerns and his choice of format for this novel emphasises how unreliable any account of any event should be thought of as being.