An Aroma of Coffee

This book has no plot. I knew this going in and it served me well. There can’t be a plot as time does not flow in this book in quite the normal way. The tense is constantly changing. It must have taken the author (and translator) absolutely ages to write, exerting such technical control over every sentence. I appreciated reading a book that had had such care taken over it.

But time isn’t irrelevant to the characters. History is oral and each character has a different version. The future is foretold in dreams. In other words the past is a rumour and a future a dream.

There’s a lot going on in this book, one of them being the coupling of disparate elements. Take chapter one, the sections The Park, Animals and The Game. First the idyll show more of the horses grazing, but they’re injured. Then the boys playing football beside them, but one has green flies in its eye. That coupling of an idyll and disease. Then the boy injured by the horse who eats all the leeches. That coupling of disease and humour. Finally the boys playing football until darkness falls. Darkness representing death here. These are themes and images that are returned to again many times in this, what, prose poem?

It’s also very funny. I loved the bit with the inkwells and the little blue penises. show less

Told from the perspective of an 10 year old boy, all events take place over a single summer on the Haitian coast. Instead of a single plot line, each chapter introduces a new character as observed by the boy.

3,5 en fait :)