Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
Evoking the exotic culture and racial tensions of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), in the early and mid-20th century, de Kretser offers a beguiling story of an ambitious man whose own weaknesses crush his dreams of glory.
Sam Obeysekere is born in Ceylon to a privileged family. His father is an adviser to the British colonials, and Sam is educated at Oxford, returning home to practice law. When he's approached to give his thoughts on the Hamilton case, a shocking murder under investigation, Sam is flattered by the request and handily declares an Englishman guilty of the crime. But his accusation will have devastating consequences, and Sam will spend the rest of his life with the knowledge that his involvement in the Hamilton case precipitated the derailment of his future.
The Hamilton Case is not only an intriguing whodunit but also a powerful psychological novel. Sam's pride of accomplishment masks a deep insecurity, and his ego suffers further injuries when he jealously watches others attain what he has longed for. A Sri Lankan who moved to Australia as a teenager, de Kretser hails from a corner of the world few readers know well. Her story of the flawed hero, Sam, combined with her depiction of Ceylon, makes for a remarkable book, both classic and fresh.
(Summer 2004 Selection)
The Hamilton Case does enchant, certainly, but -- more important -- the book admirably and resolutely sees the world as it really is.
The New York Times
In its patient, layered portrait of a man's colossal folly in acquiring an entirely mistaken view of his role in life, The Hamilton Case -- originally published last year in de Kretser's adopted homeland of Australia -- has earned many comparisons with Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. Yet while de Kretser does share some of Ishiguro's icy precision in eliciting her characters' crabbed delusions, she has produced something finally warmer and more compassionate than Ishiguro's chilling novel. For even as she constructs an elegant, pointed cautionary tale against the false comforts of overly tidy narrative certainties, de Kretser also denies readers the easy luxury of shuddering primly at Sam's inhumanity.
The Washington Post
De Kretser's accomplished second novel (after 2000's The Rose Grower), set in the author's native Sri Lanka in the years before its independence in 1948, is as much a haunting character study as it is an elusive murder mystery and a deep exploration of colonialism. At the heart of the story is Sam Obeysekere, a brilliant Ceylonese prosecutor and perfect English gentleman who isn't, of course, English. Born into a privileged but unstable family his "Pater" intentionally squanders their wealth; his "Mater" sleeps around, smashes expensive crystal and feels a "massive indifference" to her son; and his beloved sister seems bent on self-destruction Sam, as an adult, focuses on his young son and his career. By all accounts, he's prospering, able to take his place beside the island's ruling class of Brits, Dutch burghers and Portuguese. But when he offers to help solve the murder of an English tea grower shot dead in the jungle, Sam makes a "central mistake" that destabilizes his life and, in a way, the English-dominated life of his whole "mongrel" nation. De Kretser's self-deluding protagonist will no doubt remind readers of the butler in The Remains of the Day: it's a sharp portrayal of assimilation that she manages to make complex and even poignant ("Are we to become a nation capable of talking only to itself, a lunatic on the world stage?"). But Sam is his own unique and problematic self, and like everything else in this lush, uneasy world, from the secondary characters to the ghost-haunted jungle, he is capable of shocking. De Kretser's fine, brooding, mischievous style is sure to captivate fans of serious literary fiction. Agent, Sarah Lutyens. (May) Forecast: The Hamilton Case got great reviews in the U.K., and interviewers seemed positively charmed by de Kretser herself. With a four-city author tour and national advertising, this Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick should find itself a sizable and appreciative audience. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
At the heart of de Kretser's dark and twisted second novel (after The Rose Grower) is a murder trial, with which Oxford-educated lawyer Sam Obeysekere hopes to make his career. Born into the moneyed class of colonial Ceylon, he is continually thwarted in his ambitions to be accepted by the ruling British. Then Hamilton, an English coffee grower, is found murdered, and as the appointed prosecutor Sam believes he can solve the case-and win a judicial appointment in the bargain. Suspicion shifts from two native workers to Hamilton's friend and estate manager (also English), whose pregnant young wife takes the stand to refute his alibi and provide his motive-her husband had become enraged when she confessed that Hamilton had been stalking and harassing her. Many years later, long after Sam's personal and professional fortunes have foundered, the truth is revealed in a short story by an old schoolmate. Although there is little to admire in Sam's heartless, conniving character, readers will be drawn in by de Kretser's fine writing, evocative descriptions of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and swift pacing. The author is Sri Lankan and lives in Australia. For most public libraries.-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
In pre-Independence Ceylon, an arrogant native prosecutor misreads the British rulers he reveres-and gets his comeuppance. 1902: Sam Obeysekere is born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), of a family that's part of the colony's elite. Maud, his mother, is a great beauty, his father an amiable spendthrift. Sam believes in justice, the British Empire, and, above all, himself, the firstborn (when he senses a potential rival in baby Leo, he wills his sister Claudia to smother the infant). By the time he graduates from Oxford and returns to Ceylon as a barrister, his father is dead, the fortune gone, and Maud has engineered Claudia's marriage to Jaya, Sam's detested contemporary, a philanderer and demagogue. But Sam is undaunted. As God's gift to the courtroom, he knows the money will roll in, and it does. A judgeship beckons. Then the Hamilton case erupts. The murder of the English tea planter baffles the authorities until Sam's intervention nets a suspect. Sam is a celebrity! But, alas, the suspect is another Englishman. Sam's belief that the English prize justice over tribal solidarity proves naive, and, though his career still flourishes, all hope of a judgeship is dead. Meanwhile, Claudia has killed herself and her baby. Sam avenges her death by banishing his impoverished mother to the family estate in the jungle, driving the former socialite into eccentricity and madness. Back in Colombo, Sam marries a plain heiress, Leela, whom he treats brutally. Throughout, de Kretser (The Rose Grower, 2000) writes beautifully, but her structure is awkward (we end with a meaty postscript from a minor character), and she kills off her characters at such a clip (at least 12 deaths, mostly violent) that we havelittle sense of evolving relationships. Overall, an impressive re-creation of a vanished colonial culture and its contradictions, but not a happy fit with the domestic drama of the tormented Obeysekeres.