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dianat's review
A bildungsroman set in the Kingston inner city between the 1970s and 1990s in a neighbourhood that appears to be based on the real life deprived community of Greenwich Town.
Here’s the thing about #JamaicanBooks and Jamaican stories though: what would be exceptional anywhere else is ordinary here. So in this book you have:
Poverty (rural and urban)
Violence
A lot of gruesome death
Family and relationship dysfunction
Transactional sex as women’s main survival strategy
Hunger - the elemental nature of food is a major feature of the novel
These are standard fare in most Jamaicans’ lives.
The only out-of-the-ordinary thing is the serial murderer, who is presented as a character to have sympathy for. Also there’s a white male hero, a foreigner at that. (These two characters were problematic in several regards.)
When a Jamaican says, I think I should write a book about my life and my struggles, and they tell you: I didn’t know my father. I was molested and gang raped. I got pregnant at 13 and had a botched abortion that rendered me infertile. My stepfather molested me and my mother threw me out of the house. My brother/sister/father/mother was gunned down in front of me. My father beat my mother to death… none of this is unusual. This is the norm for a Jamaican story.
So the story this book tells, of trauma and abuse and deprivation… is commonplace. It’s the story of most Jamaicans. It’s NOT SHOCKING.
Think on that.
Back to the book:
Some realistic bits, some implausible, like the happy ending.
Clear but sometimes formulaic and sterile writing.
A structured narrative that moves along fairly swiftly - I wanted to know what happened to Clara/Fay even if it was sometimes far-fetched (notable insofar as it compares to other books set in the same time and place).
For me it was worth reading for its research value, as my book covers similar ground. (Violence, poverty, murder, societal dysfunction… )
This book is for the hardcore must-read-every-book-about-Jamaica reader (of which I am one). Otherwise, unless you want a typical sad, depressing, regular Jamaican story … .
Here’s the thing about #JamaicanBooks and Jamaican stories though: what would be exceptional anywhere else is ordinary here. So in this book you have:
Poverty (rural and urban)
Violence
A lot of gruesome death
Family and relationship dysfunction
Transactional sex as women’s main survival strategy
Hunger - the elemental nature of food is a major feature of the novel
These are standard fare in most Jamaicans’ lives.
The only out-of-the-ordinary thing is the serial murderer, who is presented as a character to have sympathy for. Also there’s a white male hero, a foreigner at that. (These two characters were problematic in several regards.)
When a Jamaican says, I think I should write a book about my life and my struggles, and they tell you: I didn’t know my father. I was molested and gang raped. I got pregnant at 13 and had a botched abortion that rendered me infertile. My stepfather molested me and my mother threw me out of the house. My brother/sister/father/mother was gunned down in front of me. My father beat my mother to death… none of this is unusual. This is the norm for a Jamaican story.
So the story this book tells, of trauma and abuse and deprivation… is commonplace. It’s the story of most Jamaicans. It’s NOT SHOCKING.
Think on that.
Back to the book:
Some realistic bits, some implausible, like the happy ending.
Clear but sometimes formulaic and sterile writing.
A structured narrative that moves along fairly swiftly - I wanted to know what happened to Clara/Fay even if it was sometimes far-fetched (notable insofar as it compares to other books set in the same time and place).
For me it was worth reading for its research value, as my book covers similar ground. (Violence, poverty, murder, societal dysfunction… )
This book is for the hardcore must-read-every-book-about-Jamaica reader (of which I am one). Otherwise, unless you want a typical sad, depressing, regular Jamaican story … .
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