Dooley puts forward the compelling argument that Naipaul’s uniqueness comes from his ability to observe and describe human beings in an unsentimental manner. She writes: ‘To gloss tactfully over the truth is, as he sees it, neither helpful nor kind and would betray his ethical standards.’ It is likely that Naipaul’s skill in this area comes from his comprehension of his own human ‘failings’. This ability to capture the multiple and disturbing humanity of people, flawed or admirable, is drawn to our attention by Dooley, for example, in Naipaul’s poignant characterisation of Behzad’s compassion, in his travel book Among the Believers (1981):

He led me by the hand; and just as the moorhen places herself a little downstream from the chick, breaking the force of the current which would otherwise sweep the little thing away for ever, so Behzad kept me in his lee, walking a little ahead of me and a little to one side, so that he would have been hit first.

If the main thesis of this book is that ‘understanding V.S. Naipaul as a writer entails understanding him as a man’, then Dooley is not simplistic about this formula, but she recognises that for Naipaul, in particular, a considerable knowledge of his personal history and family is important. Dooley suggests how Naipaul’s life is reflected in his writings: ‘His travel books, beginning with The Middle Passage (1962), are as much explorations of himself as of the places he visits.’ Few writers have written with deeper sympathy or sharper observations about the Caribbean, India, Africa and the Middle East. People, not politics, are his main concern, and his writer’s reactions to them.

The acknowledgment of this subjective quality in his writing is crucial in understanding his writing. Unlike Dooley, several of Naipaul’s critics have not been able to go beyond ‘the pretence of disinterest and objectivity’; rendering Naipaul with the labels of ‘black imperialist’ and even ‘racist’. Naipaul’s description of the Amerindians in The Middle Passage is unflattering. He appears to be making a factual statement when he refers to them as ‘emotional parasites’. But Dooley explains emphatically that with a closer reading: ‘This is very clearly a personal opinion, directly related to his own inability to understand these people, and although it contains a certain dislike, it does not sow contempt or disapproval, only puzzlement and defeated intellectual effort.’

This book offers the student and reader of Naipaul a range of opinions from a number of critics and Naipaul’s own assertions about his writing. Dooley, however, comes to her own conclusions, rescuing Naipaul’s writing from popular misreadings and misperceptions. In relation to Naipaul’s most popular work of fiction, A House for Mr Biswas (1969) Dooley says: ‘All of these incidents exemplify the unpredictable nature of human responses to a variety of situations, which is one of Naipaul’s constant preoccupations. This is hardly a political position, but it does support his opposition to ideology that many have characterised as conservatism.’

Dooley takes another glance at Naipaul’s controversial assertion about the West Indies being a void where nothing new was created, which led critics such as Edward Said and George Lamming to brand Naipaul as ‘colonial’. She argues that this is ‘a very specific reaction in a specific time and place, not a general and considered political opinion’, though she does concede that Naipaul may have been deliberately provocative. Dooley is critically suspicious of reading Naipaul merely from a political perspective. She asserts in a number of places in the book that Naipaul is less interested in politics and more interested in people. Referring to books such as The Mimic Men (1967) and The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), she comments: ‘Naipaul has had an abiding interest in elections … but his interest is always in the social and personal behaviour they inspire rather than the political process itself.’ Furthermore, she asserts that Naipaul’s writing shows that he believes, ‘[t]here is a more important truth about people than a political or economic view’.

Part of Dooley’s approach is to draw out the universal qualities of his writing, in spite of, or perhaps because, he writes about a number of different societies and individuals. For example, in reference to the main protagonist in A House for Mr Biswas, she says: ‘His struggles and achievements echo the struggles and achievements of all individuals who refuse to conform, in whatever setting and circumstances.’ In this interpretation, she does not give greater emphasis to the colonial theme where the house becomes a stupendous metaphor in the post-colonial void of displaced peoples everywhere.

The book’s perspective is always broader – the colonialism Naipaul talks about is not only exclusive to post-colonial people and worlds but is an aspect of the human condition. Dooley also promotes Naipaul as one of our significant contemporary writers when she asserts that Naipaul, in such prescient non-fiction books as Among the Believers and Beyond Belief (1998), explains the origins and motives of terrorism – an urgent task in the contemporary world.

However, in Dooley’s attempt to rescue Naipaul’s writing from political attacks and invective, she has depoliticised his writing. Naipaul is a highly political writer who provides a strong indictment of colonialism; he offers ‘an ethics of seeing’ rather than a support for political causes. Linked to this is the glossing over of the themes of exile, diaspora and displacement, which the book simply mentions without drawing out their significance to the writer’s imaginative explorations.

The historical, cultural and human experiences of the ‘girmit’ or indenture, a mere footnote in history, are the essence of Naipaul’s psychology and the force that drives his writing. In fact, a major factor in Naipaul’s being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature is this focus on the ‘suppressed histories’ of many post-colonial societies.

The book hardly criticises Naipaul’s personal bias in his writing. The following comment, regarding The Middle Passage, is rare: ‘His pre-existing sympathy with the Jaggans, East Indian West Indians like himself, though not explicit, is obvious and makes for dull reading in parts.’ Surprisingly, Dooley does not even criticise Naipaul’s portrayal of women, though Naipaul is at his best when characterising men. Related to this is his awkward relationship with sex. She suggests that Naipaul’s reluctance to write about sex is connected to his personal feeling of discomfort with it. Dooley says: ‘Violence, or the possibility of violence, is always present in his work, but until Half a Life he left aside, no doubt with a sense of relief, the question of sex.’

The book is appealing in its style: Dooley uses no jargon, and the organisation of her analyses of Naipaul’s works in short, concise chapters makes it structurally accessible. She covers the range of Naipaul’s writing: his earlier fiction, non-fiction, travel books and ends with his latest fiction, Magic Seeds (2004). Her lists of books, articles and websites in her bibliography are worth perusing if you wish to read Naipaul’s critics or Naipaul himself. It is a refreshing work of critical analysis, written with sensitivity and insight. Dooley shows us how the man, Naipaul, illuminates the writing, ‘but the mystery of the writing will remain’ – significantly, Naipaul’s own insight.