Jean Buffong

I can't say I especially liked this book. The young narrator, Flora, had a tendency to start with a story and then suddenly go off on a long tangent. Sometimes many pages would pass before she would get back to the original story, and I found the book very had to follow. The West Indian dialect, though it definitely added authenticity and spice, was at times difficult to understand. And this book also had no plot to speak of; it was more of a slice-of-life novel.

On the plus side, it was an show more excellent and evocative portrait of Caribbean island life, and that appears to have been the author's main purpose for the novel. She clearly loves her homeland, and with good reason. I think my dislike for the book was more a matter of personal preference than anything else. A part worth quoting, pages 46-47:

"The road sort of runs inside the belly of stools of bananas, sprinkled with countless fruit trees -- oranges, grapefruit, mangoes, almond -- all sort. In between you find a nutmeg tree laden with opened or half opened pods. The opened pods are like light pink lips slightly opened exposing the red mace and hard brown shell that encase the nutmeg itself. A cocoa tree covered with yellow fruit and the occasional sugar cane stalk adds to the natural tapestry. A crick, and a crack may disclose a donkey, lazily grazing beneath the twisting vines, or the bow bowing of a dog as it chases a manicou or mongoose. Everything merges into each other. The exotic mingled fragrance is like fermented alcohol. Inhale too long and you'll sure be drunk. With all that around you still have only to peep between the dancing leaves to your left to glimpse the twinkling starlike bluey-silvery waves of the sea."

With passages like that, this book cannot be all bad. show less

This book contains two novellas. The first is an autobiography. The second is a fictional story.

The first story was slow going for me. Things are told in more or less chronological order. But the episodes are only losely connected and there is a kind of drowsiness in the calm recalling of childhood.

It was interesting to read about the kind of stories they were told as kids. One in particular as it mentioned Compère Tigre and Compère Ziah. That reminded me of the Kompa Nanzi stories of show more Curaçao. Both have the same origins (the Anansi stories of Ghana) but it is always a pleasant surprise to actually come across related tales like that.

All in all the autobiography is a nice window in time. It gave me a look on things I hadn't seen before.

The fictional story was a compelling read that really drew me in. The tension was built up well and the pacing was good. I finished the second story in one sitting. show less