It’s award season again. Time to take a fresh look at David Santos Donaldson’s Greenland. Were it simply a historical novel centered on the three years E.M. Forster spent in Alexandria, Egypt this novel would have been quite good. By choosing to write this story from the perspective of his lover, Mohammed El Adl, Mr. Santos Donaldson breathes empathy into this tale. But this is only the novel within the novel here. The other story is even more compelling. It is the complex journey of self discovery by its author. A journey that takes him from Britain to Brooklyn and, both logically and magically, to a place called Greenland. And it is by far the best novel of 2022.
Kip Starling is a queer man. Though his parents are Bahamian, his childhood was very British–almost Victorian. (He owes his first name to Rudyard Kipling.) Though accomplished, his mother is threatened by the autobiographical aspect of his early writings. Ultimately it is James Baldwin and his immortal Giovanni’s Room, which provide him with the inspiration to leave Britain behind and pursue a career as a writer in New York City.
But like so many queer persons, Kip doesn’t always fit in. His fellow black students at Columbia don’t want to sit with him in the dining hall because he just doesn’t strike them as black enough. He’s British, likes E.M. Forster and–seemingly the worst offense–likes to go skiing. The portrait he paints of the white Jewish man that he marries is largely sympathetic, but a series of events leads him to wonder if he might perhaps harbor some unexamined racist attitudes.
Kip craves the ultimate escape. And, in the final pages of this magnificent debut novel, an element of a queer magical realism is added, as strangers offer deep insights and even seem to read his mind. And Greenland becomes a place of almost divine inspiration.
Needless to say, QueerReader strongly recommends this book–by far the best novel of 2022.
David Santos Donaldson’s Greenland is published by Amistad.