K-SCORE: 84
Author: Bryce Courtenay
Part of me kind of doesn’t get it. There seems to be or at least has been in the past a large market for these narratives that don’t follow a central plot but rather a couple central themes and survive off of an authentic recreation of a historic time and place and several interesting characters. That’s perfectly acceptable, don’t get me wrong. I liked The Power of One and would even call it good. Bryce Courtenay has a talent for creating a flowing, readable, prose and forcing the strongest and most interesting attributes of a character out in a very short period of time. Talking about The Power of One is easy as long as you start everything you say with, “Oh I really liked Geel Piet,” or “Hoppie Groenwald is a great addition to the story even though he’s only a tiny fraction of Peekay’s life” or “Say what you will about Doc, I think Grandpa Chook taught Peekay more.” But if you want to talk about Peekay’s journey - meh.
“might as well have ended anywhere”
The narrative might as well have ended anywhere. I think it’s evident in the final chapter that Bryce Courtenay thought there were more cohesive links to the parts of his story than there actually were. Peekay, after developing past his childhood bullying problems, after impressing a medicine man, after dedicating his life to boxing, after meeting a music and cactus mentor, after spending time in a South African prison, after fighting racial injustice in a private school, after making a lot of money with his Jewish friend and cohort, after surviving a mining accident, carves his initials in the bare flesh of his enraged tormentor from the time he was five. Wha? That’s not - there’s not - he was over that, man! Peekay had learned far too much on far too many subjects ranging from racial injustice in pre-apartheid South Africa to the hypocrisy of born-again Christians to think, “You know what the real problem with my life is? I never got a chance to kick the shit out of the dude who murdered my pet.” No. The narrative has disparate elements and definitive sections, some stronger and some weaker, in general powerful and entertaining, but not so much connected into a fully conceived story.
Which is fine if you’ve got the talent of Bryce Courtenay. He seems like the kind of guy that can just sit down and write for fifty or sixty hours about whatever is on his mind and a lot of people will reasonably say, “Yeah, I’ll read the hell out of that.” I liked it too. Just not that much. Instead of newspapers writing, “This book has everything,” like the New York Times did, or “A near-perfect novel, grand in theme, rich in narrative vigor,” like the Library Journal did, the only thing on the inside cover should be, “Come for the South African boxing, stay for the chicken.”