The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

Published by Hogarth on September 27, 2022

Cee watched her younger brother get caught in the furrows while swimming in the sea. She rescued Wayne (or at least his body) but nearly drowned, passing out on the beach. When she woke up, a man in a blue windbreaker drove her home, then disappeared. Cee had no idea what became of Wayne.

Cee was walking to school with Wayne when a car struck him. The driver was wearing a blue windbreaker. He carried Wayne home. Cee went to the bathroom but the man was gone by the time she finished. Cee had no idea what became of Wayne.

Cee was watching Wayne enjoy a ride on a carousel when he simply disappeared from his horse. Yes, a man with a blue windbreaker appears.

Cee is Cassandra Williams, the product of an interracial marriage. She narrates different versions of Wayne’s disappearance. Each story unfolds with dream-logic, details changing as the story progresses. Therapists have no success finding a useful memory, a failure that they attribute to a traumatic event that Cee must have buried. Yet from conversations with reliable sources, it seems that some of the details are true. Wayne disappeared. His body has never been found. Cee handed a blue windbreaker to her father. A pocket in the jacket apparently contained a clue to its owner.

As a young adult, Cee sees Wayne in crowds. She writes his name without realizing it. Cee is sure that Wayne died when was 7 and she was 12, but her mother is convinced that he is still alive. If he’s alive, she can’t blame Cee for killing him.

Cee’s mother has started a foundation called Vigil to support parents of missing children — parents who refuse to accept that their kids are probably dead. She is one of those grieving parents who has made a lucrative career for herself by exploiting tragedy. Perhaps that’s why she can’t admit that Wayne is gone; the media love the missing children of white mothers, but a dead black kid is just a statistic.

The Furrows is a novel of ambiguity. What happened to Wayne? Is he alive or dead? Did he disappear in each of the ways that Cee describes, perhaps in alternate realities? Is the young black man who took the name Wayne the real Wayne Williams and, if so, why do Cee and her parents fail to recognize him, despite the startling resemblance between Wayne’s father and the new Wayne? Why is the new Wayne following Cee and insinuating himself into her life?

A jarring change in the point of view occurs when the narrator shifts from Cee to the young man who calls himself Wayne. The new Wayne tells stories about being orphaned when his parents were murdered in bed, stories about life on the streets, stories about prison. Stories about going to school with a kid named Wayne.

The new Wayne’s mentor spouted glib theories about time that add to the novel’s ambiguity; in the realm of theoretical physics, time is ambiguous. The new Wayne seems to have alternate realities of his own; he sees himself on video stomping a victim during a fight but is sure he wasn’t there.

More interesting than the novel’s issues with time are its issues with race. Wayne’s white mother can’t accept his death, but his black father tells Cee “for us, death is everywhere.” When Cee’s mother accuses the new Wayne of stalking the family, it’s clear that the police will take her side to the detriment of the new Wayne.

Ambiguous novels sometimes fail to resonate with me. The Furrows had me scratching my head at times. I’m not sure what to make of the emphasis on time. I think Namwali Serpell tries to make a larger point about living in the moment, paying attention to life, but I’m not sure if that is her intent. I didn’t understand the ending at all. Still, the ambiguity prompted me to think about deeper meanings. This clearly isn’t the kind of ambiguity that signals an author who doesn’t know what she wants to say. Readers who give the novel a second reading (or a very close first reading) might unpack more of its secrets.

The story makes insightful points about the impact of race and class on grieving and socially acceptable responses to loss. Other readers might find other insights. In the end, some novels succeed because they make the reader feel (in the words of new Wayne) “a certain kind of way.” I’d put The Furrows into that category.

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