Yvvette Edwards

Yvvette Edwards’s debut novel, A Cupboard Full of Coats, is an elegantly structured story of guilt and redemption. Fourteen years after her mother’s murder, Jinx still blames herself for her role in the crime. She is living alone and in a state of emotional exile in London’s East End, separated from her husband and young son, when Lemon arrives on her doorstep unexpectedly: “He just knocked, that was all, knocked the front door and waited, like he’d just come back with the paper show more from the corner shop, and the fourteen years since he’d last stood there, the fourteen years since the night I’d killed my mother, hadn’t really happened at all.” An old friend of Jinx’s mom and her abusive husband, Lemon blames himself for the death. Lemon’s arrival sparks “some kind of voyage of discovery” for Jinx and Lemon as they spend the next few days revisiting old wounds and reliving past events.

Jinx’s first-person narration is emotionally raw and brutally honest. Her edgy voice is counterbalanced by Lemon’s melodic, Caribbean diction. Over several days, the healing process begins as Lemon breaks down Jinx’s self-defenses with home-cooked meals and other ministrations, including a foot massage that left Jinx a “shapeless, boneless heap of melted contentment.” Edwards’s vivid language captures the full range of human appetites and emotions with admirable precision. Jinx’s dark thoughts are portrayed in clipped, brusque sentences—“I wanted to kill him. I’d been angry before in the past, but nothing on this scale ever. I wanted him dead”—but the passages of longing and desire are flowing and sensuous:

“He’d cooked oxtail and butter beans for dinner, with small round dumplings the size of marbles, brought it to me in my bedroom on a tray, waited while I adjusted the pillows behind my back and smoothed a level space on the duvet for him to put it down. … The meat was so tender it fell from the bone, melting inside my mouth, the gravy spicy and so compelling I found myself unable to stop eating even when the plate was empty, sucking out every crevice of the bones, using my mouth like a bottom-feeder, my tongue like a young girl French-kissing an orange.”

The narrative alternates between the present day interactions of Jinx and Lemon and Jinx’s memories of her mother’s last months of life, culminating in the events leading up to her violent death. A Cupboard Full of Coats is a masterfully structured novel, building suspense even though the ending is revealed on the first page. Impressive in its psychological complexity, this is one of the best novels I’ve read this year.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License. show less

This book begins with an older man knocking on a London door in the pouring rain. The man is from the worst part of Jinx's past, the part involving her stepfather and the murder of her mother, for which she feels responsible. Lemon was her stepfather's best friend. Together, over the following days, they discuss their shared past.

Edwards begins her book by making Jinx, the narrator, unsympathetic and then works forward to make her actions and thoughts understandable. This is an show more uncomfortable book, with its theme of domestic violence tied to the coming of age of a teenage girl. Jinx may have made her home as clean and uncluttered as possible, but as Lemon cooks for her, her house fills with the tastes and aromas of her childhood, as the only child of an emigre from Montserrat, and with that the memories of when her mother fell in love with the wrong man. show less

What would you do if you opened the door to find a man you hadn't seen in 14 years standing on your doorstep, a man who disappeared from your sixteen year old life? What if you had loved him with every fiber of your teenaged self? What if the last night you saw him was the night your mother died, was murdered? What if you held yourself responsible for her death, you felt you killed her? How would you respond to this man from the past then? This is the opening premise of Yvvette Edwards' show more first novel, a novel longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Jinx has spent the past fourteen years blaming herself for her mother's violent death. She is so full of guilt and anger at the situation that she is completely emotionally frozen, unable to connect even to her young son Ben. Her husband Red moved out with Ben when he was just a baby and Jinx hasn't been able to repair the relationship either with Red or with Ben because she is so trapped by her feeling of culpability. So she lives a lonely and unfulfilled life. But when Lemon shows up on her doorstep, he starts to thaw her just by his very presence, forcing her to remember that terrible night and what led up to it.

Inviting him to stay, Jinx is afraid to re-open herself emotionally to Lemon but he gently and insistently takes her into the tragedy of his own life, having just lost his wife and been estranged from his own son for his son's entire life, as he leads her to face the biggest tragedy of her life. Alternately narrated by Jinx and by Lemon, the past comes to life as they finally speak of Jinx's beautiful mother and of Berris, her fiance and lover, the man who murdered her in a fit of jealous rage. Each of them adds layers to the tragedy, sharing from their own perspective, admitting their feelings from the time, exposing what drove them to act the way they did, finally creating a complete and total picture of that night. As Lemon listens and expands on Jinx's understanding of the events leading up to her mother's murder, he cares for her, nurtures her, and cracks open her heart just the tiniest bit, allowing her to finally face all her confused and unhappy feelings, to share the unspeakable, and to let go.

The novel is exquisitely written. It takes place over one weekend although it ranges backwards fourteen years and to the months leading up to the murder. There is a slow uncovering of long, intentionally buried memories and Edwards uses all of the senses to show this blossoming, describing sights and sounds and noises with a startling vividness. And she tackles race, conceptions of beauty, abuse, love, family, and coming of age surprisingly fully all within this relatively short novel. The way that the reverberations of the murder leak into every crevice of Jinx's life and the way that her all-consuming guilt dooms her to be an emotionally distant and confused mother are convincingly shown. While there is certainly no doubt as to the fact of the murder (it is made clear almost from the start that Berris went to prison for it), the way in which the whole truth about the circumstances is revealed is masterfully done, keeping the tension of the story constant and drawing the reader ever forward. Intense, passionate, and brimming with emotion, this is a compelling read. show less

This is a brilliantly written, passionate mother-daughter story. Jinx has lived very contentedly with her mother Joy after the death of her elderly father leaves them financially secure. Joy, however, hides from her daughter her desire to be with a man and her unhappiness with their quiet life. When she falls in love with Berris, a fellow expat from Montserrat, the household turns upside down as the relationship between Joy and Berris leaves Jinx feeling rejected. Berris's friend Lemon steps show more into the fraught situation and provides comfort for Jinx. But there are dark places in all of these relationships and when tragedy occurs, there's more than enough blame to be shared and even more difficult forgiveness to be rendered. Somehow, each character is simultaneously innocent and guilty.

As told by Jinx, the story immerses the reader in the back stories of each character as if we are inside their heads. It's a genuinely strong and sorrowful read. show less