What initially seems an old-fashioned saga proves more interested in genre than in characterĪ growing sense that The Old Drift could go on for ever is tribute to its inventiveness but also a feeling of weightlessness in what begins to resemble a series of vignettes strung together with lusty sex scenes (the main source of interaction between characters, with diminishing returns). Added buzz comes from interludes told by a punning chorus of mosquitoes, which seems in keeping with other fantastical touches, including someone who grows so much body hair she needs to shave three times a day, and another woman who weeps so much she’s able to offer her bottled tears to an unsuspecting guest. “And that was how Agnes met Lionel Heath,” one paragraph ends, with the latter character not yet introduced. For 200 pages or so The Old Drift is electric with the sense that Serpell is laying down pieces in a puzzle kept teasingly out of sight.
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