‘Racing With The Rain’

By Petamber Persaud

Part One

‘Racing With The Rain’ by Ken Puddicombe, MiddleRoad Publishers, 2012. Reviewed by Frank Birbalsingh.

Professor Emeritus Birbalsingh is an anthologist and the author of many scholarly publications including From Pillar to Post: The Indo Caribbean Diaspora, Passion and Exile: Essays in Caribbean Literature, The Rise of West Indian Cricket: From Colony to Nation, and two anthologies of Indo-Caribbean writing Jahaji and Jahaji Bhai. His latest book on cricket, Indian-Caribbean Test Cricketers and the Quest for Identity is now available. Birbalsingh is an acknowledged book reviewer.

Racing With The Rain is the first novel of Guyanese-born Ken Puddicombe who, since 1971, has lived in Canada where he works as an accountant. The novel offers a fictional version of political events during a turbulent period, from the 1960s to the 1980s, in the history of Guyana, formerly British Guiana. The novel is a roman a clef, one in which people and events may be identified through fictional names assigned to particular organisations, individuals or places, for example, “Liberty Home” for actual Freedom House, “Arawak Hotel” for Carib Hotel, “Kingsley” for Sydney King, and “Jack Hill” for Jack Kelshall.

The narrator, Carl Dias, is a Guyanese who lived through events in the novel before coming to Canada, and settling in Toronto where we first see him, in 1980, sixteen years after he left Guyana. He is Senior Economist at the Canadian Business Bank, and is separated from his Russian/Cuban partner Natasha and their two children – Alexei and Irina, who play no active part in the novel. Carl receives news of the death of his father Augusto in Guyana, and his narrative consists of an account of his visit to Guyana to attend the funeral, except that chapters describing his visit are interspersed between reflections on his family or friends, and documentation of Guyana’s political history between the 1960s and 1980s.

The narrator’s surname betrays his origin in a Portuguese community, a Guyanese minority group who were brought to Guyana as indentured workers, from Madeira, during the mid-nineteenth century. The group has evidently done well since Carl’s father enjoys the status of a successful Georgetown business man, influential among the Conservatives (an actual political party – United Force – whose leaders are chiefly Portuguese or rich Indian-Guyanese) all vigorous supporters of free enterprise, and sworn enemies of the Reform Party (actual People’s Progressive Party that is supported mainly by Indian-Guyanese) and regarded as Marxist/Leninist or Communist. A third party, the Republican Party (actual People’s National Congress whose membership is largely African-Guyanese and ostensibly Marxist,)  forms a strategic coalition with the Conservatives despite deep ideological differences, mainly because coalition brings blessings of the Kennedy administration in the US, and practical help from the C.I.A. and American Labour Unions  who share a common anti-communist aim of depriving the Reform Party of power gained (by democratic means) from an electorate that is largely Indian-Guyanese.

The two strands of the novel’s plot consisting of action from the period of Carl’s visit in 1980 and from the tumultuous period of the 1960s with strikes, riots and other ructions, allow the reader to see both the collusion necessary to  replace the Reform Party regime with one that is Republican, and the consequences of Republican rule, by 1980, when it had produced widespread food shortages, disorder, increased crime, corruption, repression and dictatorship that left Georgetown, once known as “the Garden City of the Caribbean” in mere shambles: “Signs of decay everywhere. Trenches were filled with stagnant water and garbage and tall reeds lined the banks. Buildings were weather- beaten. Streets were perforated with potholes and sidewalks rutted and cracked.” (p.310)

Ken Puddicombe is a professional accountant who provided controllership for a number of companies in the private sector before he retired to pursue his love of writing. His writing has appeared in newspapers and literary journals in Canada and the UK. Originally from British Guiana, he migrated to Canada in 1970 and still lives there with his family. Racing With The Rain is his first novel. He is working on a second novel Junta and a collection of short stories entitled Down Independence Boulevard for early release. His genre is fiction, based on international locations but especially focused in Canada, the Caribbean and Guyana.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com