Ingrid Persaud

Boysie Singh is a bad man but one that women love. His childhood sweetheart loves him and bears his child but he lives with Popo, an ex-prostitute. When he meets Doris she sees a way into society but she needs to smarten him up. Each woman thinks she can control Boysie Singh and each is destined to suffer before making her escape.
This is quite a slow-burner of a novel. It is written in a Trinidadian patois and it does help to have a little understanding of Panjabi as well, however the show more language is lyrical and the story so compelling that the reader is hooked. Boysie is a very unlikable character but is based on those 'bad boys' that the girls can't keep away from and the setting in 1950s Trinidad is evocative and vibrant. show less

Netgalley provided my copy of the book.

This book made me cry in ways that are very spoilery. Recommended.
Set in Trinidad, the story is told by a mother, son, and their lodger, a teacher. The teacher is hiding that he is gay, after being made to leave home when he came out as a teenager. The mother is recovering after years of domestic violence. And the son has an idyllic, protected childhood, until he learns a secret about his father's death, and decides to leave home for New York.

This isn't show more a tourist advert for Trinidad, but at the same time it did feel like travelling somewhere 'by book'. There's mouthwatering descriptions of food, and whilst I won't be 'liming' (I think "partying"?) anytime soon, the descriptions of just going and sitting on a beach (rain outside right now) and then heading into the water made me want to jump on a plane. Alongside that is violence, homophobia, narrow 'religious' attitudes to women's lives and poverty, but because of the way Persaud writes, there is a sense of how people live day to day rather than 'exotic' others.
TWs
One of the other LT reviews credits Persaud with referencing Derek Walcott (who I've not read) - thanks to them.

"The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome" show less

I paid this book the ultimate compliment of rationing the amount of time I spent reading it as I didn't want it to finish. This will be one of my books of 2021.

Set among the Indian community of Trinidad, there's Betty, lone parent to Solo after the death of her violent husband. There's lodger Mr. Chetan: friend to everyone but with secrets that are hard to live with. And there's Solo himself, who discovers how his father died, and draws painful conclusions. The narrative swings between these show more three characters over the years in which the story plays out. Extraordinary, ordinary lives, often steeped in loneliness. Here are three characters looking for love, for understanding, for acceptance. Written in lilting, poetic Trinidadian patois, this is a powerful, absorbing and compelling story show less

Ugh. What a bummer. Initially I was enjoying this book due to Persaud's choice of writing it in Trini Creole. It felt authentic and certainly helped to bring the characters to life. Her descriptions of traditional foods and the community also helped to further immerse me in the story. And that's where the praise ends.

The description for this book in Goodreads quotes two authors one calling it "An electrifying novel..." and another mentioning "electrifying prose" and for the life of me I show more can't figure out if these reviews were perhaps written by relatives. Maybe advance reading copies were sent out with those joy buzzers attached because this book, when read on a kindle, is about as electrifying as an overripe banana.

The story goes pretty much nowhere for the whole book. We follow Betty, a doting and perhaps smothering single mother, her son Solo, an obnoxiously selfish boy and then man, and Mr Chetan a closeted gay man who boards with them. Over the years they become a family of sorts until a "shock revelation" causes Solo to flee to New York City. We continue to follow these three through the years (with individual chapters devoted to the first person musings of each) for no apparent reason. None of them do much more than luxuriate in their own self-pity although they surprisingly do so in different ways. Despite attempting to tackle some timely and important issues, the protagonists never seem to grow or learn. It's beyond frustrating... where's the gd arc?!

I was suspicious of the book when it was suggested for a book group assuming from the name that it would be a weepy romance novel (I mean, what an awful name!). When I read the description, though, it sounded like so much more. I was wrong. I wanted to like this novel and it had redeeming qualities in the language it used and it's ability to transport me to the Caribbean island for moments. In the end, though, I found the writing downright wearisome and the lack of any real storyline or character development weighed the novel down so heavily that it never rose above the mundane. Exhausting. show less