SOURCE: “Risky Business: Fred D'Aguiar Continues to Take Chances in His Second Novel,” in Chicago Tribune Books, November 17, 1996, p. 4.

In the following review, Upchurch offers a favorable assessment of Dear Future.

When Guyana-born poet Fred D'Aguiar turned to fiction last year with his debut novel, The Longest Memory, he proved to be a writer who likes taking chances on both topic and technique.

His subject: the fatal whipping of a runaway slave on the plantation of a “liberal” but absentee Virginia slave-owner. His approach: a nimble inhabiting of all the parties involved, giving each protagonist—black, white and shades in between—a vivid voice and presence on the page.

Though the book's central incident was horrific, D'Aguiar's explorations of the background prejudices, desires, appeasements and rationalizations leading up to it were so subtle and precise that the book felt less like a history lesson than a canny illumination...