Borrowed Times by John Glynn; Decent Historical Fiction Has One Glaring Flaw

 Borrowed Times by John Glynn; Decent Historical Fiction Has One Glaring Flaw

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Borrowed Times by John Glynn has a lot of promise. It's a bildungsroman about a young Englishman trying to find his path in 1940’s and 1950’s Rhodesia but could be so much better. There is a huge glaring flaw that must be addressed.

Melvyn feels rootless and out of place within the rigid expectations drilled into by his harsh boarding school upbringing and his self-involved status seeking mother and stepfather. He takes his interest in antiquities and cartography to Rhodesia to stay with his older brother Tristan. Rhodesia is still under British rule because of colonialism and there are hints of rebellion on the horizon.

There are parts of Borrowed Times that are worth reading. Melvyn’s character is particularly developed through his experiences in school. 

His encounters with a rigid class system born from aristocracy is compelling. He is someone who recognizes the privilege that is installed by others because of their birthright. They were born at the finish line and Melvyn feels insignificant because of them. 

When Melvyn travels to Rhodesia, it's to find a sense of belonging that he is denied from his indifferent family and the society in which he was raised. He gets along with his brother and sister in law rather well. There is an agonizing moment where Melvyn’s true affection for his brother/surrogate father figure is revealed.

Setting also makes the book. While in Rhodesia, Melvyn moves out of his comfort zone by doing rigorous farm work, preparing maps, and exploring the landscape around him. The book is filled with descriptions of the landscape without resorting to assumptions to depict Rhodesia as a savage backwater or an idyllic paradise. Instead it is both realistic and atmospheric. It captures the environmental and political structures which characterized the country during that point in time.

Politics are actually part of the issue. Melvyn befriends many native Rhodesians and begins to understand their concerns about the restrictive white establishment. It's a situation that we can see will create the subsequent years of segregation and racism that still mar the country years later.

However, this is at the expense of a local voice which is the book's glaring flaw. We only receive primarily Melvyn's voice, a white newcomer from an English background not from a local black character. It lacks intimacy and authenticity At the very least, a Black character could have shared narrative duty with Melvyn. 

Otherwise it's similar to a Hollywood movie that uses a white voice to tell what is primarily a story involving the Black experience. It projects the overall impression that Glynn could only tell this story at a distance from someone separated from this experience instead of from the people who actually lived it.