Book review: The Lost Love Songs Of Boysie Singh tells story of Trinidad gang boss through four women

The Lost Love Songs Of Boysie Singh

By Ingrid Persaud
Historical fiction/Faber & Faber/Paperback/537 pages/$28.22/Amazon SG (

amzn.to/45ieQby

)
3 stars

There is that famous final scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) between Al Pacino’s Michael and Diane Keaton’s Kay.

Michael, having just ordered a slew of revenge killings – including that of his brother-in-law – lies to his new wife about his involvement. A wave of relief breaks across her face as she chooses to believe him.

As she exits, Michael’s lackeys surround him, kissing his ring to crown the new don of the Corleone mafia family.

One of them closes the door on Kay: She will be shut out of this world of men and violence, sometimes turning a blind eye to and benefiting from the prestige of its activities, but growing increasingly estranged from the man she once knew and loved.

Costa First Novel Award-winner Ingrid Persaud’s second full-length novel The Lost Love Songs Of Boysie Singh captures much of this same dynamic, writing from the points of view of four women connected to the real historical figure of Boysie Singh, a gang boss who terrorised inhabitants of the Port of Spain in Trinidad from 1947 to 1956.

Deferred to as the Rajah, a reference to his Indian roots and recognising the significant levels of Indian immigration into the British colony during the period, Singh is the perpetrator of heinous crimes.

His gang promised to ferry people from Trinidad to Venezuela, but robbed them at gunpoint and dumped their bodies into the sea, often without a trace. About 400 people died before Boysie was hanged in 1957 for murder – though, ironically, for one he may not have committed.

Before that, he had endured a lengthy trial and been acquitted, for a while even taking on the mantle of a fiery itinerant preacher after claiming to have found God while being held in prison.

Trinidad-born Persaud’s version of events follows in the vein of recent popular feminist retellings of Greek myths. It is the women’s susceptibility to Boysie’s charm and good looks – and their later regrets and self-delusions – that she focuses on, as well as their competition for his affections in a world where a man is one of the few ways to guarantee a woman’s safety and social mobility.

Mana Lala is Boysie’s long-time devotee, who bears his only son and quickly finds it useful to employ their offspring as a bargaining chip for Boysie’s affections.

Then there is Popo, the prostitute usurper, whose wiles and business nous begin Boysie’s ascent.

Doris, Boysie’s “red” creole wife – who Persaud implies Boysie married because of her fairer skin – suffers the indignities of being shut out from the white high society to which she aspires and is driven to ever more ostentatious displays of wealth.

Finally, there is Rosie, the only one in the quartet who sees Boysie for who he is. The polyamorous femme fatale with an affinity with snakes exists on the fringes of society and runs a rum shop.

Persaud’s narrative shifts easily among the four, deriving a tepid tension from the threat of violence and conspiracy in an ultimately predictable story.

The real curiosity is the language, with most of the text written in a variant of Trinidadian English infused with Bojpoori words from the north-east of India – “he leaned over and buss a kiss on my mouth” and “I gave him a pretend cut eye and smiled”.

Close attention has been paid to Doris’ speech too. She self-corrects her grammar, pernickety about making sure Boysie knows that she “ain’t like all them dumb Indian girls he’s kept under his thumb”.

Unfortunately, Persaud’s tendency to over-elaborate flattens, rather than expands, the interiority of her characters. Boysie, absent, is easily still the most fascinating character. 

It is a tale of male avarice and callousness as old as time, a Trinidadian Henry VIII  without the attendant pomp and bureaucracy.

If you like this, read: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, 2009, $25.89, Amazon SG, go to 

amzn.to/4aRFQjh

). This novel is hard to beat when it comes to historical fiction. Mantel decentres the story of Henry VIII to make it about Thomas Cromwell, written with verve and impeccable intrigue.