Benjamin's Gift

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 29/03/1999

Modern-day magic and a whirlwind of dramatic historic events animate an unusual coming-of-age story in Golding's second novel, which comes five years after his captivating debut in Simple Prayers. It is 1930 and everyone, it seems, has gone broke, except for New York tycoon Jean Pierre Michel Chernovsky, 71, whose ceaseless treasure hunting yields an unbidden but glorious surprise when a young orphan boy suddenly appears in his limousine. Benjamin is a uniquely beautiful child, with a conspicuous strawberry birthmark on his face, and he has an extraordinary gift: he can disappear from one spot and reappear elsewhere at will. He rebels against Chernovsky when the elderly man uses Benjamin's gift to illicitly acquire antique weapons for his personal collection. Later, the boy loses his clairvoyant nanny, the multitalented blues-singing Cassandra Nutt, after she initiates him into manhood. Benjamin's best friend, Petrie, aka the Calculator, travels the world exploring his own superhuman abilities with mathematics, and Benjamin soon embarks on journeys of his own, to Europe to join the WWII resistance movements and to the jazz clubs of Harlem. In heartbreaking fashion, Benjamin learns that his gift cannot change the world (he fails to save a Jewish family from the Holocaust, for instance). Like Simple Prayers, this novel explores philosophical questions and human frailty. Golding's vision here is winsome and worldly, briskly combining the erotic with the traumatic, infusing spiritual inquiries with down-to-earth answers. From Old to New Amsterdam, from the Jazz Age to the Atomic Age, Benjamin's struggle stands as a resilient metaphor for the ethical challenges of the 20th century.