SOURCE: “A Necessary Gospel,” in London Review of Books, June 6, 1996, pp. 24-5.

In the following review, O'Brien offers a generally positive evaluation of Dear Future, but concludes that the novel contains unresolved underlying concerns.

It was as a poet that Fred D'Aguiar first won recognition, with his 1985 collection Mama Dot, set in the Guyanese village where the English-born D'Aguiar was sent to be educated. The place is dominated by Mama Dot, the archetypal grandmother, source of wisdom, comfort and discipline, a woman so important that when she falls ill nature itself goes to pieces.

Bees abandon their queens to red ants and bury Their stings in every moving thing: and the sun Sticks like the hands of a clock at noon. Drying the very milk in coconuts to powder. 

This vivid, funny, uncluttered work, moving between standard and Nation language, was immediately attractive. D'Aguiar, however, had other subjects...