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Almost any human life, observed in its entirety from the god-like view of the novelist, reveals a gap between what it should have been and what it is. Most novels dramatize the widening of this gap: the great heroes and heroines of fiction end up tragically or comically distant from their intended destinations, and it is the quality of the writer’s reply to the implied question — what went wrong? — that identifies his genius. But serious novels which chart the painful, inglorious, ultimately triumphant narrowing of the gap are comparatively rare, although this partial achievement is possibly the most urgent theme in humanist literature. It is treated with complete success by V. S. Naipaul in his fourth book, a novel on the grand scale. With Mohun Biswas he has created, in depth, an original character whose extreme individuality illuminates the general experience of mankind. His progress through life resembles that of someone trying to mount a descending escalator, and the small advance eventually made is as enthralling to read about — and perhaps more significant — than the steepest fall. This is encompassed by a story which at the same time establishes in all their complexity the changing customs of a sophisticated expatriate society: the Hindu community in Trinidad. Also, indirectly and almost incidentally, the novel provides one of the clearest and subtlest illustrations ever shown of the effects of colonialism.

     Some readers who have enjoyed Mr Naipaul’s earlier books — his two novels, The Mystic Masseur and The Suffrage of Elvira, and his collection of stories, Miguel Street—may be surprised that such grandiose claims can be made for him: these were on a deliberately smaller scale, conceived on a note of irony so perfectly controlled that he was assumed to be exclusively a ‘humorous’ writer. They are certainly very funny indeed, but like the best comedy they are also deeply serious. The Suffrage of Elvira contains a devastating and (il one reflects on it) despairing exposure of the abuses and corruption that flourish when the democratic system is first applied to a multi-racial society; Mr Naipaul’s air of detachment and gaiety of manner seem to have blinded many to the relevant and unwelcome message that they in fact convey. (When reviewers were not lumping him together with totally dissimilar writers who happened also to come from the West Indies, they compared him to such wildly inappropriate names as Damon Runyon and Ronald Firbank!). And for those who want to find it, there is social history in Miguel Street, which reflects the gradual transition of Port of Spain from a pre-war backwater to the booming city of today; and also, in several of the episodes, a vein of pathos, almost a sense of tragedy, never obtrusive because expressed with delicate restraint. These books, and The Mystic Masseur, have often been described as satires, with the accompanying suggestion of heartlessness and exaggeration. In fact, Mr Naipaul never distorts reality: he acknowledges the farcical aspects of West Indian life but these are played down rather than heightened in his work, and it is only because he avoids the turgid pomposity of one school of Caribbean literature, the sex-cum-race sensationalism of another, and the self-consciously whimsical charm of a third, that his sober respect for truth has been mistakenly interpreted as high-spirited caricature.

     Compared to A House for Mr Biswas, however, these earlier, slighter books are seen to be lacking in depth: they take their place as vivid, two-dimensional sketches for this major work. Yet Mr Naipaul has managed the gain in profundity without losing his admirably light touch; the new novel has an ambitious theme and an intricate construction, while introducing a host of diverse characters all of whom have been exactly realized, but it has none of the wordy clumsiness associated with those fat, panoramic, pretentious volumes that form part of a trilogy, or a quartet, or a saga. The writing is as spare, the narrative pace as speedy, the detail as essential and the dialogue as apt, as in his shorter work; he has succeeded in filling an unusually large frame without sacrificing the finesse of the miniaturist’s technique.

     The birth of Mohun Biswas, and the death of his father which shortly follows it, contain those elements of mingled tragedy and farce that are to accompany him through life. The son of a labourer, but of the Brahmin caste, he later marries into the formidable Tulsi family — a self-contained matriarchal community with its own transplanted laws and superstitions, its own complex hierarchy and subtly shifting balance of power. With his wife Shama, their son Anand and three daughters, he establishes a small, discontented unit within this large and comparatively powerful termitary. Among other things, this is a study of dependence: Mohun is dependent on the acquisitive Tulsis, themselves neurotically unified by the fact of belonging to a minority group within a society that is itself dependent — a colony. And allied to dependence, is the theme of dignity. Humiliation attaches itself early to Mr Biswas and never leaves him; he literally wears himself out in the effort of countering a series of frustrations, petty in isolation but deadly in constant succession: yet with his peculiar self-knowledge, his aggressive wit and a hard core of stubborn confidence, he succeeds in absorbing the persistent indignities of his circumstances into his own personality, which eventually assumes a stature that gives dignity to the whole sad, silly struggle. This is concentrated in his desire for a house of his own — a desire fulfilled only at the end of his life. As one reads, one gradually shares his obsession; and throughout the book, details of masonry, of structure and decoration, are provided with loving and fascinated care, for in a doubly dependent society a house becomes a potent symbol of personal independence and thus an affirmation of human dignity. The theme is stated early in the novel, in the last paragraph of the Prologue, which looks forward to the house that Mr Biswas finally owns.

How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it: to have died among the Tulsis, amid the squalor of that large, disintegrating and indifferent family; to have left Shama and the children among them, in one room; worse, to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.

     Too much should not be made of the novel’s exotic background. Mr Naipaul does not insist on quaint information regarding the manners of Hindu family life. He allows the West Indian scene to come alive for us, unsimplified and understandable, through the people he describes. For his greatest gift is the ability to create character. This is today an almost suspect talent: for years novelists have explored consciousness, have tried to establish what is it like being a person rather than what a person is like, and the desire fully to realize a character’s possibilities has resulted in an emphasis on everything in human personality that is tentative and indefinite. An objective view of a character, defining its limitations, often seems arbitrary; positive, definite characters have been relegated to the world of satire, where arbitrary treatment is expected.

     A House for Mr Biswas is far from being a satire: Mr Naipaul loves his characters, and his treatment of them is not arbitrary although their limitations are defined. His ability to create character includes the rarer ability to convey the interaction between characters, the relativity of ‘personal relations’. This over-worked phrase suggests a self-consciously subtle study of sexual intrigue against a vaguely leisured background; here the personal relations have little to do with sex and the background is a society where whole families sleep in one room. Among other things, Mr Naipaul examines the ways in which lack of privacy can either modify character to a point where the individual is absorbed by the group, or irritate it to a point where it sharpens into eccentricity. Thus we have the lifesize and unforgettable personalities of Mr Biswas himself, of Mrs Tulsi with her oblique bullying, conventional martyrdom and gentle autocracy, of many subsidiary characters drawn with equally strong strokes; and also a surrounding, competitive chorus of gossiping aunts and bickering children, some of whom are distinguished by a single attribute, the survival in legend of something they once said or did. But the dominant characters are never static: they alter in fact, and also they seem to change with the shifting standpoint from which Mr Biswas sees them. Mrs Tulsi’s stature perceptibly diminishes as expatriate traditions disappear with Trinidad’s development. (Trinidad is, after all, much nearer to the United States than to India: sons grow up, go to England, come back talking about Russell, Laski and Joad.) Mr Biswas differs in his relationships with Bipti, his self-effacing mother, with his executive aunt Tara, and with each of his children. His married life with Shamoma is the most finely realized relationship of all: the gradual development from remote hostility and resentment to the loyalty that comes with intimacy is established by means that defy analysis.

     The people in this novel have that reality which can only be achieved by a writer whose search for truth is accompanied by love. It is strange that the wit of Mr Naipaul’s phrasing, and the elegance of his style, should suggest emotional detachment. The surprising harmony between the gravity of what is expressed and the delicacy of its expression results in a clear-sighted sincerity, where the harshness of objective observation is tempered by the indulgence of subjective experience and the author’s researches into life are at the same time lucid and profound.