Friends, this is the first novel I've ever successfully read as an audiobook (as an adult, at least - I have a vague memory of listening to [b:Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates|983401|Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates|Mary Mapes Dodge|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1275092663l/983401._SX50_.jpg|2801485] around when I was age seven, that was some good stuff). I think the format may have been a fortuitous choice. This novel is consistently grim and violent (comparisons to Marlon James seem apt) and the extra remove of listening to it being read rather than reading the words directly myself maybe kept it from being too, too much.

The main characters - Lala, Adan, Tone - are all well created. The conditions of life, the poverty, the exploitations from multiple directions, the violence, are believable. The one portion of the book that seemed to stick out as perhaps out of place was that given to Mira Whalen's point of view as she struggled to deal with the murder of her husband in a robbery by Adan. I can see why it was included, Mira allowed a different socioeconomic point of view on the island to be represented, but it was out of the main current of the story and in a novel with plenty of misery, it seems an extraneous helping of it for the reader.

Overall, however, I found it fairly engrossing. ( )

It's not often that I abandon a book without finishing it. I managed six chapters of this - nearly 60 pages - before realising it was going to get worse, not better. It's not that the writing was bad - the pace and scene-setting was very good and that's why I read as far as I did. But the characters were awful, the events sordid, tragic or traumatic (or all of the above). I didn't need that kind of negativity.

I checked the rest of the plot on Wikipedia and am glad I stopped where I did. I understand that much of the story is autobiographical and am shocked and saddened that such things happen. But there's enough tragedy and trauma on the news; I mostly read fiction books for relaxation and escapism. This is not relaxing, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

I see that the book is very popular and has won awards; the writing is certainly powerful. But in my view this should have been advertised as semi-autobiographical with serious abuse triggers and 18-rated violence, rather than with a quirky title that's hardly relevant to the plot.

Not recommended. ( )

“Extremes of anything are bad, and the two extremes of possession – deprivation and deluge – are especially crippling to the soul.”

Set in Barbados this book tells the story of three generations of women involved in abusive relationships. The tale of the one-armed sister is a Barbadian folktale that older women employ to warn younger women to avoid abusive men. It is a story about how many young women do not heed the lesson and do the things their mothers and grandmothers have warned them not to do.

This is a difficult book to rate. It is a powerful and disturbing story of the cycle of abuse and its devastating results. I cannot say I enjoyed it, but I was never tempted to abandon it and cared what happened to the main characters. As a warning, this book involves the death of an infant, which occurs near the beginning and has repercussions throughout the story.

3.5
( )

There is a great deal of bleakness and despair in this story, which can make it a struggle to read, but there are payoffs, in a plot that eventually leads to a moving conclusion, and in snippets of beautiful writing. Unfortunately, there is also a good deal of pidgin dialect, which is not something that I tend to get along well with, and that was the case here, which made the book quite a slog at times. I read this partially in ebook form, and partially as an audiobook, and I found both versions frustrating, and the audiobook narrator often difficult to understand. ( )

Not long but dense. The west Indies environment of rich tourists set among the desperately poor locals is all the violence required, well that and the history of enslavement, to generate the seething violence which pulverizes so many of the lives in this book. ( )