The protagonist of the book asks his father “Why is my name Willie Somerset Chandran?” That is the starting point of the book. Willie’s father narrates the story behind the inclusion of “Somerset” in his name in the first segment. Naipaul has caricatured Willie as a weird drifter blaming everyone for his listless life, wandering aimlessly from profession to profession and from woman to woman. His vain efforts to discover his sexual side takes a major part of the second half of the book.
The book is divided into three Segments:
In the first segment called “A Visit from Somerset Maugham”, Willie’s father narrates his own childhood in India and his relationship with Willie’s grandfather. This storytelling extends to about 10 years, with information given bit by bit to Willie Chandran by his father. In this segment the story is written in the first person as though Willie Chandran’s father is narrating it.
The second segment is peculiarly called “First Chapter”. This describes the childhood and other activities in India till the protagonist Willie Chandran became 20 years of age. Then he leaves for London on a scholarship arranged by his father’s contact in the UK. The story line is presented in the third person. The author takes charge and gives the story of how the protagonist tries his hand at writing to make a living.
The last segment is “A Second Translation” which has Willie Chandran meeting another woman Ana, with whom he moves to her hometown in Africa and spends 20 years of his life there.
A particular characteristic of this book is the dislike each role player has for the other. Willie’s father does not like his own father. Hence, as a gesture of rebellion and to subscribe to Mahatma Gandhi’s call for sacrifice, he marries a backward plain looking girl in spite of everyone’s opposition. He also doesn’t like this plain looking backward girl though he sires two children Willie and Sarojini with her. Willie doesn’t like his father (or his backward mother) because he was nobody in the society and did not have any profession or money. He doesn’t like any of the various women he makes love to, including Ana who saves him from penury and takes him from London to Africa and takes care of him for nearly twenty years.
Naipaul has deliberately left out names of important people like Willie’s wife, father/mother and grandfather as though it is not important.
The main grouse of the protagonist is that he has lived “half a life” as per others’ demands and rules.
Naipaul brings out the misogynist tendency of Willie’s father when he has this to say to Willie about his ugly daughter Sarojini:
“I will speak to you frankly. I feel she was sent to try us. I can tell you nothing about her appearance that you don’t know already. Her prospects in this country are not bright. But foreigners have their own ideas of beauty and certain other things. All I can hope for Sarojini has an international marriage.”
A brief summary of the book (which really cannot be put in different words) is as follows:
For “Half a Life” the author was awarded with the Nobel Prize of Literature in 2001. The novel is about the struggle of Willie Somerset Chandran to find his own identity in a world disintegrating after the colonial era. His father, a Brahmin, is described as a person who went through his life largely ruled by outer influences, and rarely by his own desires or intentions. He ends up in a marriage with a woman whom he does not love or respect.
After knowing the reason for being named Somerset, as told by his father, he leaves with a significant urge to make up a new life in London, England.
After years of studying, and encounters with different personalities of more or less multicultural backgrounds, he recognises the urge to write, to process his inner unease about his origin and the perceptions of the ‘modern’ world in which he lives at that moment.
Some struggles with the clash of cultures later, which had social, economical and sexual paragraphs, he meets the East-African girl Ana, who has mixed cultural backgrounds.
After a while he decides to go to her country, an unknown Portuguese colony in eastern Africa.
The main concern in the next eighteen years is to overcome his own rudimentary understanding of sexual desire and process with under aged prostitutes or an affair with a woman of the town. He is severe in his observation of the break in the history of that country with the last struggles of the official Portuguese government and the waiting liberation movement incorporated by the guerillas. In the last paragraphs of his life there he recognises that his life in Africa is far from what his own life should be, and he leaves Ana for good, after betraying her for years.
I enjoyed reading “Half a Life” by the Nobel Laureate Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul who has brought out the historic ambiance of India, London and Africa while spinning the story of the trials and tribulations of the protagonist and characterization of the other well-founded and plausible characters. What impressed me was the frankness with which he has described the psyche and the professional desires and disappointments of ordinary men and women. Add to this, the free and frank exposé of the sexual side of men and women which takes up a major part of the last chapter.
