The Promise

The first section introduces some of the most important characterizations and experimental choices in the novel. Almost immediately upon meeting Amor and Marina, the reader gathers that Amor is a warm, sensitive girl while Marina is a woman with little patience or tolerance, even for her dead sister-in-law’s grieving child. When the narrative point of view switches abruptly from Amor’s perspective to Marina’s perspective on the third page of the novel, readers get their first glimpse of the writing style that will pervade the entire novel: abrupt switches between various characters’ points of view, sometimes mid-sentence, without warning or page break.

The novel employs two different third-person narrative points of view. The first is called free indirect style, which is when a third-person narrator conveys narration from the perspective of a particular character. In this style, the narrator does more than explain what a character thinks or feels; the narrator also presents the character’s worldview as if it were the narrator’s own. It is as if the narrator’s perspective and the character’s perspective are fused into one.

The second is a technique that literary critic James Wood calls “unidentified free indirect style,” which is when a third-person voice seems to be attached to a group of people, but the text never explains who that group of people is. For short bursts, the novel’s point of view occasionally dips into second person or even first person, but these occasions are usually brief interruptions of the two dominant modes just described. The first chapters train readers how to read the book as they go, gradually getting them accustomed to its perspectival leaps.

These intricate point-of-view techniques are worth understanding because they pervade the novel, creating an immersive reading experience. The novel demands readers’ full, careful attention; otherwise, they will quickly lose track of which character’s perspective the narrative is inhabiting.

Crucially, this first passage also introduces the novel’s titular event: Manie’s promise to Rachel that he will grant Salome ownership of her house. This signals Amor’s uniqueness in her family by her reaction to hearing this promise. It never occurs to her that her father will not keep it; she tells Salome’s son Lukas about it because she has no doubt the promise will be honored. As foreshadowed by the lightning that strikes and marks her, she is both the story’s protagonist and the family’s conscience. From this moment forward, she is the only Swart who sees the promise as an uncomplicated opportunity for her family to do the right thing.