A review by red_steele
Red Island House by Andrea Lee
3.0
1. The voice actor Bahni Turpin delivered five star performance, she is an all-time favorite.
2. The island of Madagascar is the central focus of the Red Island House and I was intrigued to read about this island nation. This is the first book I read by Andrea Lee. She is a talented writer and I would be interested in exploring other novels in her catalog, however, this book was a disappointment. The book is a collection of short stories culminating as a literary “bridge to nowhere”. Ultimately there was no plot and the heroine’s personal struggles with the island and her husband were unresolved.
3. This book explores neocolonialism, class, race, privilege and economics to name a few. The book also highlights the necessity of Malagasy women to participation in sex tourism, the economic exploitation of white Europeans who continue the colonization mindset of their forefathers, and how the island is used to fulfill youthful fantasies at the expense of the Malagasy inhabitants.
4. Shay Gilliam is an Ivy League educated Black American expatriate, who was raised in a middle class family in Oakland, California. Shay married a non-college educated, wealthy yet stingy Italian named Senna who is fifteen years her senior, and they have two children together. The author never convinced me of a true love connection between Shay and Senna, which lead to the believability that their flawed marriage went over a relational cliff as the book progressed.
Although Shay is connected to the island by race, there is a disconnect with the Malagasy people who work in her home and live in the surrounding community due to socioeconomics. Shay realizes that the grandiose house built by Senna in Madagascar, is opposite of the ideals of her youth, and who she was raised to be as a Black women. Ironically, when Shay explores the house for the first time, she symbolically observes the red color of the floor tiles, leaving her with an unnerving impression that “the ground is covered with blood”.
5. The book suffered from a lack of character development, and unfortunately allows one of the most intriguing characters Bertine Lagrande to die (the book could have benefited from more of her presence). I would like to have learned more about Shay’s life in Italy, her visits to California to see her family, and more about how her bicultural and biracial children navigated the world, and their experience of receiving a college education in the United States.
2. The island of Madagascar is the central focus of the Red Island House and I was intrigued to read about this island nation. This is the first book I read by Andrea Lee. She is a talented writer and I would be interested in exploring other novels in her catalog, however, this book was a disappointment. The book is a collection of short stories culminating as a literary “bridge to nowhere”. Ultimately there was no plot and the heroine’s personal struggles with the island and her husband were unresolved.
3. This book explores neocolonialism, class, race, privilege and economics to name a few. The book also highlights the necessity of Malagasy women to participation in sex tourism, the economic exploitation of white Europeans who continue the colonization mindset of their forefathers, and how the island is used to fulfill youthful fantasies at the expense of the Malagasy inhabitants.
4. Shay Gilliam is an Ivy League educated Black American expatriate, who was raised in a middle class family in Oakland, California. Shay married a non-college educated, wealthy yet stingy Italian named Senna who is fifteen years her senior, and they have two children together. The author never convinced me of a true love connection between Shay and Senna, which lead to the believability that their flawed marriage went over a relational cliff as the book progressed.
Although Shay is connected to the island by race, there is a disconnect with the Malagasy people who work in her home and live in the surrounding community due to socioeconomics. Shay realizes that the grandiose house built by Senna in Madagascar, is opposite of the ideals of her youth, and who she was raised to be as a Black women. Ironically, when Shay explores the house for the first time, she symbolically observes the red color of the floor tiles, leaving her with an unnerving impression that “the ground is covered with blood”.
5. The book suffered from a lack of character development, and unfortunately allows one of the most intriguing characters Bertine Lagrande to die (the book could have benefited from more of her presence). I would like to have learned more about Shay’s life in Italy, her visits to California to see her family, and more about how her bicultural and biracial children navigated the world, and their experience of receiving a college education in the United States.