Folio Books: Review of The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul

The Enigma of Arrival

by V.S. Naipaul

Vintage

V.S. Naipaul's best known work is A House for Mr. Biswas, which has been described as the Great West Indian Novel. But I would like to timidly suggest that his 1986 'novel' The Enigma of Arrival deserves at least equal consideration.

It is an odd book, certainly. Though it is described on the title page as 'a novel in five sections' it is in fact an undisguised account of Naipaul's life in a small Wiltshire village during the several years when he rented a cottage there. In the second section, 'The Journey,' there are some flashbacks to Naipaul's youth, his voyage to England from Trinidad as a student, and his first experiences of the country that was to become his home. Otherwise the whole book deals, in lingering, minute detail, with Naipaul's experiences in his small country village.

The book is almost devoid of plot. The seasons change; the village people go about their work; Naipaul meets some of them, befriends a few, dislikes or is disliked by others. He goes for long walks through the water meadows and along ancient footpaths, observes the gradually changing landscape. One early reviewer remarked that in The Enigma of Arrival Naipaul 'makes us aware that most writing hurries much too much,' and indeed the most striking characteristic of the book is its leisureliness. No detail of observation is too minute to deserve patient description.

Such a book, in less skilful hands, could rapidly grow boring, but Naipaul is far too good a writer for that to happen. If he devotes three whole pages to a particular clump of trees it is because he finds and explains enough significance in those trees to warrant three pages. The frequent complaint that Naipaul is an old grump finds its answer here, where in every paragraph his compassion and interest in life shine through.

So The Enigma of Arrival is a careful and moving vision of the rural English landscape; but it is significant that it is the work of a man who grew up in another, hotter, harsher climate, and came as a stranger to the fields and water meadows of Wiltshire. This fact is emphasised in the very title -- taken from a typically puzzling painting by de Chirico. It is in fact the real subject of the book: the fascinating process by which a person leaves one world (in Naipaul's case, childhood in Trinidad) and arrives in another (England) and thereby develops into a different person, because the enigmatic arrival is not merely physical or geographical but emotional and spiritual.

Which is to say, The Enigma of Arrival is about Naipaul himself and the way in which he has been changed by living in England.

His record of this development is compelling because he is intensely interested in himself, and because his examination is so honest, so masterly, so confident, even when he approaches his insecurities. Which is to say, because he is such an extraordinarily good writer.

Naipaul's chief subject, I believe, has always been himself, and his best books are those in which he addresses this subject most directly.

The Enigma of Arrival is a beautiful, honest book.

N.L., 17 December, 1997

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