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Loading... The Dew Breakerby Edwidge Danticat
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Thought-provoking collection of mostly linked stories. All concern Haitians, mainly immigrants to USA, with much time also spent in Haiti itself under the Duvaliers. There is a slightly remote feeling to many of the stories, as if the tellers are in a state of inculcated shock, yet beneath is an explosive history of suffering, courage, rage, and tender humanity. I did want more--not more stories, but more insight into certain characters, more access to their emotions at times. There are moments when these good stories rise to excellence. Very worthwhile read; a telling story of the circumstances faced by so many Haitian people. (  )thesmellofbooks | May 29, 2009 |   In Haiti during the dictatorial 1960s, the man known as the "dew breaker" was a torturer. Now an American and a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, he maintains a quiet life as a husband and father; as we meet his family, neighbors, and even his victims, his story becomes one of reconciliation and rebellion; as we return one more time to his turbulent past, we witness his last violent act, and his first encounter with the woman who offers him a chance for salvation: Great book until the end - I thought it just sort of dropped off. ( )jepeters333 | Dec 26, 2008 |  Absolutely loved this book. It's about a family of Haitian immigrants living in New York. The father worked as a prison guard in Haiti and is the eponymous Dew Breaker of the novel. The book consists of interrelated stories, and slowly the daughter of the dew breaker discovers how her parents met, and why her father is called a dew breaker. I'd read one of the chapters - the one where the mother and father meet again after a separation of seven years in New Yorker or the Atlantic or similar such magazine. The story just stayed with me, even though I forgot the author's name. When I read this book and found that chapter in it, I was so thrilled. It was like greeting a long forgotten friend. A colleague of mine and I were discussing this book and she said "this woman can write her ass off". I can't think of a more apt thing to say. There is such an underlying richness to the book. Very highly recommended. (  )chickletta | Apr 12, 2008 | A nicely written, interesting read. The only thing that really bothered me about the book was that I thought the stories would be slightly more connected or have slightly more of an effect on each other than they did. As I started reading I found each interesting, but thought they felt a little lose. I brushed it off assuming the book might come back to them or that aspects of other stories would somehow relate to them in a way that would tighten up threads in previous stories, but ended up a little disappointed. In the end it wasn't quite as affecting as I had been expecting. Still, a sometimes haunting book that asks some interesting questions and doesn't try to give easy answers. (  )narwhaltortellini | Oct 13, 2007 | My first time reading this author who tells a very ood story. ( )aleshel | Sep 18, 2007 | 0.061 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0349117896, Paperback)In her third novel, The Dew Breaker, the prolific Edwidge Danticat spins a series of related stories around a shadowy central figure, a Haitian immigrant to the U.S. who reveals to his artist daughter that he is not, as she believes, a prison escapee, but a former prison guard, skilled in torture and the other violent control methods of a brutal regime. "Your father was the hunter," he confesses, "he was not the prey." Into this brilliant opening, Danticat tucks the seeds of all that follows: the tales of the prison guard's victims, of their families, of those who recognize him decades later on the streets of New York, of those who never see him again, but are so haunted that they believe he's still pursuing them. (A dew breaker, we learn, is a government functionary who comes in the early morning to arrest someone or to burn a house down, breaking the dew on the grass that he crosses.) Although it is frustrating, sometimes, to let go of one narrative thread to follow another, The Dew Breaker is a beautifully constructed novel that spirals back to the reformed prison guard at the end, while holding unanswered the question of redemption. --Regina Marler(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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