[In the following excerpt, Morris gives qualified praise for A Casual Brutality.]

The narrator of A Casual Brutality is Raj Ramsingh, an "East Indian" born in Casaquemada (a fictional island not far from Trinidad). He has qualified as a doctor in Canada, and has married a white Canadian. Although he knows that the socio-political situation in Casaquemada (Spanish for burnt house) is unstable, Ramsingh persuades himself he must return. He goes back to the island, with his Canadian wife, Jan, and their infant son. Jan must adapt to an unfamiliar culture, which includes her husband's extended family; and Raj Ramsingh finds himself increasingly entangled in the racial and political complications of Casaquemada, a society on the edge of anarchy.

Neil Bissoondath was born in Trinidad in 1955 but left in 1973 and is now a Canadian citizen. His first book, Digging Up the Mountains, a collection of short stories, was published some three years ago, with a promotional quote from his uncle, V. S. Naipaul, who professed himself "staggered by the talent … already so developed."

A Casual Brutality, Bissoondath's first novel, captures and holds our interest through the carefully handled suspense of an eventful storyline, the emotional force of many episodes, and the sensitive presentation of several characters and various worlds.

Through the intricate structure of the work, Casaquemada gradually unfolds in historical depth and social detail. People on this island—mostly Indian or black—interact with varying degrees of tolerance, affection, hostility; and, as one character remarks, "sometimes you just can't tell who is your enemy and who is your friend." With the oil boom ended and the country in economic trouble, some who are well-off are resented by some who are not. Corruption spreads, internal authority disintegrates.

But this is not only a novel about political trouble in a third-world country. It is about the personal formation of Raj Ramsingh, about his family and other aspects of his Casaquemadan context and also about his Canadian experience. There is critical comment on Canada as well as on Casaquemada; and, like the island, Toronto is vividly presented: student lodgings, a girlie club, snow, an overnight dance party, the menace of racism, the desolation of an old people's home—all are made memorable.

Giving many instances, some of them in Canada, the novel implies that casual brutality is a regrettable constant in human experience and that self-deception will be punished. The narrative begins:

There are times when the word hope is but a synonym for illusion: it is the most virile of perils. He who cannot discern the difference—he whose perception of reality has slipped from him, whose appreciation of honesty has withered from within—will face, at the end, a fine levied, with no appeal, with only regret coating the memory like ash.

But the novel is at its least convincing in passages such as this, when Ramsingh presents himself as having learned something generally meaningful about his profession or life, small countries or the world. Much to Bissoondath's disadvantage, they recall V. S. Naipaul narrators such as Kripalsingh or Salim. For instance, Salim begins A Bend in the River: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." Though the strategy is similar in the opening paragraph of A Casual Brutality, Ramsingh—unlike Salim—sounds mannered and self-important, and noticeably different from the Ramsingh we hear in most of the book.