OVERCOMING VICTIMISATION

If you loved The World According to Garp by John Irving, you are bound to enjoy Robert Dugoni’s The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell – A Novel.

Dugoni draws the reader in and keeps them enthralled without noticeable escalation or marked plot development. He whisks you to a small American town and narrates the story of a boy born with red pupils – a tale both heart-breaking and hilarious at times.

As with Garp, Sam’s mother plays a pivotal role in his life. She believes his ocular albinism is God’s will to ensure an extraordinary life for Sam and encourages him to embrace being different. Which is, understandably, easier said than done. It isn’t long before Sam Hill’s red pupils earn him several nicknames, including ‘Devil Boy’ and, inevitably, ‘Sam Hell’. He’s an easy target for bullies and suffers the full vigour of schoolyard cruelty.

Despite the continued love and support from his parents, Sam grows up as a lonely outcast,

victimised from the moment he steps out of the safety of his home. The colour of his pupils

ultimately determines his destiny. He is always overlooked and excluded, simply because no one can stand to look him the eye without flinching. Similarly, he is never chosen for a sports team or academic rewards despite his ability and intelligence.

Throughout his childhood Sam has only two friends – both misfits in their own way. One is the only black boy in his catholic school and the other a girl who refuses to conform to societal gender rules.

The book also covers the power of Catholic guilt, intolerance and faith. The narrator is Sam as a 40-year-old country doctor, who recounts his formative years and how he had been judged and affected by the typical parochial attitudes of the congregation and the leaders of the community. While telling the story, Sam is faced with some demons from his past and begins to question if anything in his life had indeed been by Divine Design.

The level of quirkiness in Dugoni’s characters also reminds of Irving, and I particularly enjoyed the character of Sam’s mother and her strong faith and unconditional love for her extraordinary son. The hilarious moments resulting from her strong-willed and stubborn fight for fairness had me in stitches.

Sam’s story of a courageous boy encapsulates the exceptionally difficult challenge of embracing being different; and of overcoming the small-mindedness and narrow beliefs that permeate small-town society. Something that, as a South African living in a society fraught with stereotyping and challenged by prejudice, strongly resonated with me.

Sam’s experiences offer stark insight into the harrowing realities of bullying and the long-lasting affects it can have into adulthood. Reading this book also took me back to the time my own kids started school and how each one of them – unique in their own right – needed the support of their mother as they learnt to cope with and master the intricacies, nuances and various challenges of social interaction. What more can a mother do than to equip her child to embrace his or her own being?