SOURCE: A review of The Longest Memory, in World Literature Today, Vol. 69, No. 4, Autumn, 1995, pp. 851-2.

In the following review, McLeod offers an unfavorable assessment of The Longest Memory.

Although the publisher describes The Longest Memory as a novel, it is at best a novella; and if we subscribe to Poe's view that a story is a work than can be read conveniently at one sitting, then this work (under 25,000 words) belongs to the shortest of the genres of prose fiction. But is not merely length that allows this categorization: there is no substantial development of character, no complexity of interaction among characters, no feeling that a major statement about life (or any of its aspects) has been explored adequately. As a result, Fred D'Aguiar (whose poetry has been acclaimed) cannot be said to have created, in this his first fiction, a work comparable to any of the...