Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

A quick post,  because Bryce Courtenay doesn't need me, and because I only read his novel The Power of One because it was for book club:

Nope.

At the time of this book's writing and publication, I recall because that's how old I am, it wasn't unreasonable to have a white saviour plot interwoven with racist caricature of various kinds, pointing in multiple directions. That's where virtually all of the narrative drama and situational tension comes from, and it's pretty transparent even if you're sometimes surprised by what's going on.

Similarly (is it similar? I mean, maybe it's similar), it's not that unusual to have a child protagonist and retrospective narrator repeatedly going back to the theme, in this case explaining the power of one as an individual's sense of morality, individualism, and so on. It strips away more of the drama, but that's only an issue if you think of this novel as narrative rather than didactic, which....

But it's gripping, and there are wheels within wheels, and Wilde's Miss Prism would've been happy with the outcome (if not the degree of violence or the amount of blood): "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."

The Power of One is a product of its time, and it's a tough slog at this point in history if you're not doing it specifically with history in mind.