The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (original 2009; edition 2010)

I loved this book! It was a novel that not only tells the reader a story but invokes the senses. More to come on this one. ( )

A novel that starts off looking small--focusing on conflicts in a marriage--and gradually reveals its large scope--seeing the rifts in the marriage as a way of seeing conflicts and tension within Trinidad. There is some nice parallelism, many amusing. There is also some lovely description. What is best rendered, though, is the dialogue and behavior of people in a relationship who are punishing each other for reasons they can't articulate well.

4.5 stars, but I rounded down rather than up because at the last minute (literally--on the next to last page)--the protagonist spends a paragraph saying what we already know, in clunky exposition. If this had been mid-book it wouldn't have mattered, but it spoiled the momentum of the ending. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. I struggled through the first pages, but then it got much more interesting to read. It was an interesting insight into the changing dynamics of the island and the conflict that a woman felt not only with the changes going on in Trinidad but the process of alienation with her husband. The book was raw and powerful and the characters felt very real and exposed, particularly Sabine. The construction was interesting and thoughts kept returning to the beginning of the book which portrayed the main characters in a much different light. Sabine, the wife and main character is portrayed as ruined and despondent, a completely different person from her earlier life portrayed in the latter part of the book. It is a story about conflicts, Sabine in a love/hate relationship with her husband, Sabine against the Island, Native Trinidadians vs. English colonists, household help vs. employers, an island filled with beauty and with violence. Thought provoking and highly recommended. ( )

Sabine Harwood arrived in Trinidad in 1956 with her husband George and her green bicycle; for the longest time she thought they would only stay temporarily and would eventually return to England. He loved Trinidad from the start, though, and they stayed through the years when the British colonial power ended and all the political changes following the leadership of the charismatic Eric Williams. Sabine finds him captivating and finds herself pouring her frustrations into letters to him that she never sends. As a book, this one captured and held my interest and I really enjoyed reading it. ( )

Roffey's writing is vivid, earthy and visceral but not always comfortable. When I started reading, I felt shock at the sudden immersion into a strange new world and didn't immediately take to the central characters Sabine and George, ex-pats who appeared neither likeable or sympathetic. Yet it didn't take me long to become drawn in by Roffey's Trinidad. I quickly warmed to the minor characters and started to become intrigued by the ex-pats in their seventies with a love-hate relationship with Trinidad.

The first half of the book is told in the third person and is a vibrant description of Trinidad in the present day. After a shocking conclusion to Sabine and George's story, the book goes back to the 1960s when Sabine and George first arrived in England. Sabine expected this to be a temporary arrangement but George became obsessed with the country and refused to consider leaving.

In part one of the book, Sabine accused George of never thinking of anything or anyone else once he arrived.
"You fell in love, lost your senses."

As for George,
"Truth was, he preferred Trinidad - always had. He preferred these wild emerald hills, the brash forests, the riotous and unpredictable landscape of Trinidad to the prim hazy pastures of his own country, England. He wanted this bold land. Not the mute grey-drizzle of Harrow on the Hill. He liked the extrovert people, not the prudish and obedient couples his parents had mixed with. He felt alive here, unlike Sabine."

The second part is told by Sabine and has a calmer tone. Here the reader reaches a clearer understanding of Sabine, her marriage and the events which led her to be who she was when we first met her in part one and which also led to what she eventually does. We also learn more about Trinidad's recent history. Colonalism, racism and political activism become part of the story effortlessly and without a hint of polemics.

An evocative, believable story and I think, well worth reading. ( )

The only thing I could really mark this down from five stars for was that I found it hard to get going with in the beginning, I picked it up several times to read the first few pages and put it down again. Once I read more than the first 20 pages I was hooked.

I really like the "backwards in time" way of telling a story. The first half of the book is the third-person viewpoint story of Sabine and George Harwood, a white seventy-something couple living in Trinidad in 2006. The book then goes back to fill in the backstory from Sabine's point of view from 1956 to 1970. As a recovering mystery addict I really do appreciate not wondering what is going to happen all the time and being able to concentrate on the characters and the plotlines.

I did feel there were threads of the present day story that weren't explored enough - the Harwood's son and daughter were only sketchily portrayed but were interesting characters and I wanted to know more about them and how they ended up as they were. But I guess that could have been a whole other book really.

Overall I really enjoyed the journey, the characters and the location. ( )

The Woman on the Green Bicycle takes us to the Caribbean island of Trinidad where George and his French wife, Sabine, have made their home for over 50 years.

Trinidad is the other woman in their marriage, George loves the island and, because Sabine loves him, she has stayed despite her fierce desire to leave. Sabine feels she is melting away in the heat, but has missed her chance to leave. She pushes all her energy into a one-sided epistolary affair with Eric Williams, Trinidad's Prime Minister, letters that are at first filled with hope, but later turn rather bitter. On finding these unsent letters, George realises how little he knows his wife.

The book is split into 4 parts, starting with the most recent, then jumping back to the couple's arrival on the island and continuing from there, fleshing out the back story. The young couple arrived in the '50s, at the very end of British rule. Things were changing fast on the island, with the People's National Movement gaining momentum led by the charismatic Eric Williams. As time marches on, the writer shows us how the island has changed, and how those changes have affected different sectors of society.

Inevitably, race is a theme in the book, the protagonists are white, and so will never be able to escape the tarnish of past actions committed by those of their race. Sabine, who had a cosmopolitan upbringing, finds this hard as she is unable to break in to society, high or low. She will always be an outsider, though her children are considered to be Trinidadian. Sabine sees the social injustices on the island, but finds it hard to help change happen.

All in all, Roffey shows us the many sides to Trinidad and the people that live there. In the couple, we get two extreme views, George loves the island almost unquestioningly, whereas Sabine finds it hard to get past the flaws. Reality is, of course, somewhere between, and that is for the reader to find. ( )

As Meera Syal once aptly put it, “Life isn’t all ha ha hee hee” and so, I should not expect all my reading experiences to wow me so I have to accept that this perfectly good novel just doesn’t hit the spot for me.The novel covers 50 years in post-war Trinidad and focuses on the relationship between Sabine and George Harwood, who have very different experiences of expat life. The structure of the story is unusual in that we have the denouement at the start of the novel which focuses on the events of 2006 and subsequent sections deal with earlier events in 1956, 1963 and 1970 which have shaped the future lives of Trinidadians. So, we are less concerned with plot but more with the characters of Sabine and George, neither of whom are particularly likeable. Sabine has a love-hate relationship with the island which often seems a rival for George’s affections. George comes across as a tin pot general who couldn’t succeed in England and subsequently thought he’d set his cap at making his fortune in the colonies. How then do they cope when the political landscape changes dramatically? I think this novel had a lot of promise but it just didn’t engage me. A novel doesn’t have to have likeable characters in order to impress me but I just found Sabine and George very dull and uninteresting and their trials and tribulations were just not enough to sustain 437 pages. Some of the writing is beautifully lyrical and those passages describing Trinidad as a living breathing creature particularly stood out for me. I got a real feel for the island and its people and felt fully drawn into this exotic world but the only flies in the ointment were Sabine and George who literally missed the boat! Maybe I am a closet rebel and wanted to oust them as one of the carnival masqueraders expresses to Sabine,“Eh, you like it here in Trinidad? Well, Miss, lemme tell yuh somptin: yuh days numbered. Go back to where you came from. De Doc go put allyuh on a boat. Send you home pack up head to foot, pack you tight in chains. And if you doh like it he go pitch you overboard.”Of course, the promise of a new hopeful era falls flat and we see Trinidad sunk in corruption with the omnipresent blimp observing it all like an all-seeing eye. Sabine, to give her some credit, does try to gain some understanding of the Trinis and their aspirations and at least she has some more insight than George as she understands that they can never properly “belong”.I enjoyed getting to know more about the history and culture of Trinidad but could have done with less George and Sabine and less pages.PS it's on the short list for the Orange Prize this year but don't let that put you off!! It's a very easy read despite its length and isn't full of convoluted prose. ( )

I read this book toward the end of the year, and it catapulted itself to the top of the Favorite Books of the Year list and easily replaced other contenders. Brilliantly executed, utterly compelling. Profound and heartbreaking. I just loved everything about it.

The plot is simple: a newly married English couple moves to Trinidad in the late 1950s when the husband accepts a job there, and their lives are altered by the politics of the country as it declares independence from British rule.

The execution of this simple story is utterly brilliant and totally captivating. Richly atmospheric with vivid descriptions of the Trinidadian landscape and culture and peoples. Complex and mesmerizing characters. Profound, yet subtle, probings into race and class and colonization.

Intertwined with this story of a country in tumult is George and Sabine's marriage which is filled with misunderstandings and complicated passion and opposing opinions of Trinidad. And at the very heart of it all is Sabine, who struggles to understand herself as a woman, as a British citizen, as a wife. She grows and evolves, becoming bitter and resigned yet also more completely her whole true self. Sabine learns how to define "power" and "compassion" and "revolution," and it is this that is the theme of "The White Woman on the Green Bicycle." ( )

Everyone here!
Janine chose this book because it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She didn't know anything about Trinidad so she was disappointed that there was not enough about the country. Description of hot, steamy climate was good. Overall interesting.
Others:
Interesting way it was set up & found it intriguing. Good to read about other countries and their politics especially now that Trinidad is in trouble.
A realistic portrayal of colonial life.
People stuck together then but she had nothing to go to.
A bit contrived. Odd that they never went back to France for holidays.
The author didn't quite pull it off.
Putting”steupsing” all the time was really annoying. ( A sibilant click of the tongue behind the teeth! Jenny looked it up!)
Glad I read it but it was very hard work.
The chunks of story didn't blend.
No sympathy with her.
Loved it, it was a good story. Descriptions of birds etc very good.
It felt like a second book as if it had been a struggle to write.
Peripheral characters great.
A classic migrant story. She spent her life trying to belong but always thought she would be leaving. George was very happy and hoped she would settle down.

6, 9 6, 4, 6, 7, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 5

I was ready for a 'knock your sox off' book when I began "The White Woman on the Green Bicycle". I didn't find it to be so. The story takes place in the racially political years of Trinidad and is about a couple who move there from England "for three years" in a job related transfer for the husband. He falls in love with Trinidad, she....not so much.
The story is plotted out in three sections. The first section; the early days .... their move and the wife slowly realizing that chances are pretty good their three years is going to turn into more. She becomes very disillusioned with their lives, the island and her husband. But she has their children and a busy life so she accepts the situation.
The second section; the ending days .... their children are grown and the couple are now in their seventies and still in Trinidad. The wife has become complacent and yet angry at the same time with her husband. She knows they will never leave Trinidad and will die there. The end of this section is the end of the story but not the book.
The third section; the middle years is the real meat of the story and comes at the back of the book. So much happens in this part of the story. The political unrest becomes an unbearable violence toward the whites and Trinidad is now a very dangerous place to be living. The couple both have secrets from one another. He is unfaithful with many women though he adores his wife and she has a secret correspondence (which she never mails off to him) with the Prime Minister or whatever they call the leader of the country. When the husband finds this, he feels even more betrayed than she does when she realizes that he is sleeping with other women.
For me the best part of the story was the interactions of the characters with their servants and the one servant's family. I cared more about them than I did the main characters.
I would not say that this was not a good book, but I think it could have been so much better. All of the concepts are there, the characters are there....they just needed to be drawn out more clearly and be more who they were. Like I said the strong characters were the servants. I won't read this one again and I am very surprised that it got as far as it did on the Orange list. My first disappointment with an ORANGE. ;-)
I have had to reassess this book. Today, some 22 days after reading this book I have to say that it is still resonating in my brain and in my heart. I WILL read it again one day and I have had to change my rating of it from 3 1/2 stars to a 4 star read. ( )

Trinidad during the fight for independence.Sabine and family ( )

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle spans a period from the 1950’s through 2006, the period in which Trinidad gained independence from Great Britain, only to continue to struggle to take care of its people and succeed. Read my review at http://PopcornReads.com/?p=1073 ( )

I read this book (courtesy of NetGalleys) while in London and on the way home, so it was a while ago now, and it’s high time I say something about it. It tells the story of a couple, Sabine and George Harwood, who move from England to Trinidad in order to advance George’s career. They don’t know it at the time, but they are on the last ship to bring British colonials into the country (Sabine is French, but has married an Englishman). Shortly after they arrive, change begins to happen: Trinidad eventually gains its independence under their charismatic although ultimately disappointing leader, Eric Williams, and the white colonists will lose their status and power.

The novel has an interesting structure: for the first third or so, it takes place in 2006 and portrays an elderly George and Sabine, describing how their marriage has evolved, how their children have turned out, and what their lives have become. After this section, we move back in time to read about their arrival in Trinidad in 1956, and we follow them in later sections through the 1960s and 70s. This backwards structure works well to show how George and Sabine end up where they do: we see the results of their lives in Trinidad first, and then we look back to the causes. So we read about their unhappiness — their overwhelming feeling of listlessness and pointlessness, their estrangement from their children, their isolation, their sense that it could have been completely different — and then we turn to their younger selves and read about the series of decisions that led to their remaining in Trinidad even when nearly all other British families left. They never intended to stay longer than a couple years, or at least that’s what Sabine believed. She was always eager to go, but George fell in love with the place and resisted a move. Eventually, they become part of the island and could no longer fit in back in England if they were to return.

Read the rest of the review at Of Books and Bicycles.

Sometimes you just have a complete wrong idea about a book. About The white Woman on the green bicycle I thought of a book with an environmental theme. And I rembered positive reviews. When the book was offered by Netgalley, I did not hesitate. But I was completely wrong about the topic. The story is set in revolutionary Trinidad and Tobago in the 1950s. Acountry I don't know anything about. But I have interest in the Caribbean and being "Orange Prize finalist" should be worth something.

And what am I glad I've read this book. The prologue in which a boy is knocked out by the police made me doubt, but soon I wanted to know everything about the difficult marriage of George and Sabine and the last 50/60 years in Trinidad and Tobago.

George can get a good job in Trinidad (Port of Spain) in the 1950s and departs for three years, along with Sabine, just married. They arrive as British colonisst, just before Eric Williams seizes power and a decade tense atmosphere stars, as happens more around that time in the Caribbean.

However, we begin our story in 2006, with Sabine and George (still) in Trinidad, fighting for the rights of the local people. Halfway through the book we see how all this came about. These way of telling works brilliantly for this book because I was always curious and I have made several searches on wikipedia to see if this book could be historically true (yes, that seems to be possible).

The story tells the difficult marriage of George (likes Trinidad) and Sabine (wants nothing more than to return to England), the revolution, the tricky relationship between white settlers and local dark people. Well written, accurate, instructive. Absolutely recommended, I enjoyed this book and learned a lot.

http://boekenwijs.blogspot.com/2011/06/white-woman-on-green-bicycle.html ( )

Exquisitely written book set in post-Colonial Trinidad. Roffey shows just how complex the issues are by letting us see them through the eyes of a woman who is thoroughly conflicted about the island that becomes her home for 50 years.

See my complete review at Shelf Love. ( )

This a was random pick from the local bookshop and it proved to be one of those lucky finds. Mostly I enjoyed it for the atmospheric writing. Heat oozed off the pages. The only disppointment was the slightly strange timeline,the second half of the book tailed of a bit because the chronological end happens in the middle. But nevertheless this was an intelligent and aborbing read. A worthy prize winner. ( )

The first part of the book describes the disillusioned life of Sabine and George, a pair of expatriates on Trinidad in the present day, while the first part deals with the period from their arrival in 1956 to their failure to leave during a period of social unrest in 1970. Sabine also writes obsessively to Eric Williams, the first leader of independent Trinidad.

And I found a lot of it incompetent and consequently unbelievable. There are many occasions where a simple point is dragged out over a page of banal dialogue. Shortly before George dies in the swimming pool, we are treated to a long description of how Sabine cuts his hair and (we may suppose) ritually castrates him. Then the description of his corpse makes great play of the long white hair waving round his face.

George is described as 'an extrovert, a bookish English eccentric'. On the one hand, this is a chain of cliches and on the other 'extrovert' and 'bookish' are hardly consistent. Then again we have Sabine--she says at one point that she's seen life having lived through WWII in Antibes. (As far as I know, Antibes was occupied by the Italians and nothing much happened there by way of a war.) But with this experience behind her she's supposed to be nonplussed by the sight of a poorly-stocked grocer's, but which has cliched mangoes exploding like cliched hand-grenades (in which case the interior of the shop would have contained a mass of broken flesh if nothing else). This nugatory wartime experience (she would have been I guess ten at the time) does indeed help her at the end of the first part when she finds the gun that George has hidden in the basket of the green bicycle and when she goes to shoot Bobby Camacho the corrupt police superintendent it miraculously turns out to be functioning and loaded and with the safety catch off and her experience as a pre-pubescent resistante means that she doesn't break her wrist instead of killing him.

WTF??

There were some more acceptable moments. I found the various Trinidadian words and realia introduced into the text quite interesting, and I thought the idea of making George do interviews for the newspaper in his retirement so that we got to meet famous people like Brian Lara, Patrick Manning and Mighty Sparrow was effective. Maybe not necessary, since Trinidad's not a large place, but effective anyway.

A more realistic view would be that this book is what we would have had from Jean Rhys if she'd been deprived of her talent, difficult life experiences, impossible character and knowledge of French but had received an education in recompense.

It has been put to me that only a man could be so stupid, so insensitive, so male as not to take this book at its own valuation. Well, maybe that is indeed so...

(More at http://wp.me/pBfTB-xD ) ( )

Loved this book...set over fifty years in Trinidad you can smell taste and yearn for the country with each turn of a page...at times magical at times dangerous...moving and an unforgettable read ( )

A steamy tropical paradise.

It took me a little while to get into this book. The ending is at the beginning so we know from the start that Goerge's love of Trinidad wins over Sabine's desperate need to return home. My interest was sufficiently piqued, however, to find out what went on in the intervening years, why Sabine was writing unsent letters to Eric Williams and who he was.
But I think, at the end of the day, that I too, fell under the spell of the island, I didn't want Sabine to persuade George to return home - I could hear the call of the cycadas, feel the moisture in the air, and wanted to stay.

When Sabine and George arrive at Port of Spain, they are newly wed and ready to spend a couple of years having an 'adventure', before starting up home in Britain. George has a short term contract and they intend to return when it is completed. It is not long, however, before Sabine starts to suspect that George has other ideas, may even have had them before he arrived. His contract is renewed and he starts to build a house, he even adopts Trinidadian nationality. Sabine doesn't stand a chance.

I could really identify with their first impressions - their first home, the hot weather and the strangeness of it all - it reminded me so much of my early days as an expat in Dubai. And expat life does not suit everyone; Sabine was an excellent representation of that.

In addition this was a work of historical fiction, covering the period of time from the 1950's when Trinidad and Tobago became independent of Britain and underwent the awkward, tense, transition into a new country. The majority of expats returned home but still Sabine and George never quite managed to leave.

A very atmospheric book with excellent characters. Well worth a read, especially if you enjoy international fiction. ( )

http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/the-white-woman-on-the-green-bicycle... ( )

I originally bought this on a binge induced by the release of the Orange Prize for Fiction (UK) shortlist 2010 as the books were *ahem* on offer but I was really taken by the idea of a story exploring the background of Trinidad - a country I would admit I know little about.

What I will give this book credit for is it's incredible descriptions of either a wildly compelling Trinidad or a hot and oppressive Trinidad. The scenery was beautiful and by far my favourite aspect of the book. The local characters' speech is written in a local dialect too which is very atmospheric.

It does, however, suffer from being somewhat too long for its own characters. George staunchly plays the ignorant husband while Sabine plays downtrodden wife and...well, that's it. The story as told in 2006 is not nearly as colourful as the prologue would suggest and the characterisation is poor, aside from that of Trinidad itself. Now, here it depends on why you read but I like to be able to identify with and, hell, like at least one of the protagonists. It does become much more readable once it switches to the first person narrative in 1956 and you begin to understand how the characters started out but even that wore on after a while.

Overall:
Stick with it if you want to know more about the politics and history of Trinidad - that really is interesting! Just don't hold out for a gripping storyline or lovable characters... ( )

Sometimes, I can get hung up on a part of a story – to the point where it plagues my entire reading experience. This is what happened while reading The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey.

The book is divided into chronological sections, starting with 2006 and then going back to 1956, 1963 and 1970. So, when Roffey introduces us to the main characters, George and Sabine, we are meeting their 75-year-old versions (with most of their lives’ experiences behind them). For the first 189 pages, it was difficult to like George and Sabine. George was a lifelong philanderer – selfish and egotistical. Sabine drank and smoked excessively, and liked to pick fights with George and their daughter. As I muddled through these pages, reminding myself that the book will reveal more about these characters, something happens. Sabine beats her family dog. The scene was only a few paragraphs long but affected me tremendously. So tremendously that as I moved to the earlier years of the characters’ lives, I could not forget what Sabine did.

120 pages from the end, I couldn’t bear reading about Sabine anymore. I was done with her. I placed my bookmark in front of the next chapter, put the book aside and thought about what to do next. Ultimately, I decided to walk away from The White Woman on the Green Bicycle.

Despite my abandonment of this book, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Roffey’s writing talent and her fascinating exploration into Trinidad’s history. Indeed, many aspects of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle were appealing. Perhaps I can come back to it once I let go of my distaste for Sabine. Until then, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle will sit on my shelf; my bookmark marking the spot where I said no more. ( )

this novel has such beautiful descriptive language and truly evokes the island of Trinidad. After reading it I feel I've learnt so much about the country and it's recent history. Yet despite all this I found the main character immensely trying. No wonder her life was a misery and her husband indifferent! I also found the structure of the book rather odd as it was if the second-half flashback was meant to explain the first part yet really just felt like the introduction setting the scene for the first-part. ( )

This novel begins in contemporary Trinidad, and its main character is Sabine Harwood, a French woman who has been married to her handsome but mediocre English husband George for 50 years. At the beginning of their marriage she agreed to move to Trinidad with him for a three year period, so long as they could move back to the UK after his contract ended. George instantly fell in love with the island, as he was able to make a place for himself as a white man with little competition in a segregated society, and he took full advantage of its numerous temptations. Sabine finds herself trapped in this restrictive class- and color-conscious society, but George ignores her desperate pleas and threats to leave the island with their two children.

Sabine is captivated by the fiery Eric Williams, an Oxford educated black Trinidadian who becomes the first prime minister of independent Trinidad & Tobago. Williams is enraptured after seeing the attractive Sabine ride her bicycle in Port-of-Spain, and the two eventually meet. Sabine begins to collect newspaper clippings about Williams and writes letters to him, which express her hopes for the new country, and the frustrations of her life and marriage. She keeps these letters in boxes, which are never sent to him.

George finds these letters accidentally, and finally realizes that she no longer loves him, and has grown to despise him. He is heartbroken, and decides to win her back, by proving his love to her in a risky act that ends tragically.

Most of the remainder of the novel is set in the early 1960s, during the first years of independence, as the relationship between Sabine and George slowly unwinds. At the same time, the hopes and dreams that Trinidadians have for their new leader fade, as his government becomes more insulated and less responsive to the people's needs.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle was an interesting and well written read, which gave a rich portrayal of postcolonial Trinidad and its people. However, several aspects of the characters of George and Sabine were baffling to me, as I couldn't understand how he could be so infuriatingly clueless towards his wife's repeated pleas, and why Sabine insisted in staying alongside him for as long as she did. The novel also ends abruptly, in a somewhat confusing and unexpected manner. Despite this, I still enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Trinidad and its people. ( )