The White Woman on the Green Bicycle

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 tell the story of a marriage, and simultaneously of politics in Trinidad and Tobago in the latter half of the 20th century. The book begins in 2007, with George and Sabine Harwood, a couple who moved to Trinidad in the 1950s, for George’s work. While he instantly loves the island, Sabine struggles with life there, and is always looking forward to when they can return to England. However, as disenchanted as she is with Trinidad, she cannot help being fascinated by young dashing politician Eric Williams, who becomes the Prime Minister, promising great things for Trinidadians. Sabine writes to Williams on a daily basis, although she can never bring herself to send the letters. By turns, she is both adoring and loathing of show more Williams, resenting what she sees as his ineffective efforts to improve life for the citizens of the country.

After the first part of the story, the book goes back to the Harwoods’ arrival on the island, as a young and very happily married couple, and then shows how the struggles of Trinidad itself are mirrored in their personal struggles to keep their marriage alive.

I had had this book on my shelf for years, and eventually picked it up when I wasn’t sure what I fancied reading, and I thoroughly enjoyed it from the very first page. George and – particularly – Sabine were very well drawn characters, entirely believable, but not always likeable. However, I really liked Venus, the young woman who became maid and friend to Sabine; loyal and kind, but caught between the rich white people who she worked for, and those in Trinidad who wanted rid of them.

The book is informative about the political struggles of the country from the 1950s onwards, and demonstrates how Eric Williams started out as a new hope for its citizens, but was eventually unable to make the improvements to their lives which he promised and hoped to do. The Trinidad riots of 1970 are shown from Sabine’s terrified point of view, and I made a point of learning more about Williams and his PNM party as a result of reading the book.

Brilliantly written, with eloquent but never flowery language, this book is compulsively readable, perfectly balancing the story of two people with the story of a country and it’s leader.

I loved The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, and would highly recommend it. show less

“It’s a woman’s curse to love bad and foolish men, even when they fuck up miserably.”

So says Sabine Harwood, the white woman of the title in Monique Roffey’s exciting political-historical novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle. Her curt words sum up her decades-long experiences in post-colonial Trinidad, the setting of the novel.

Sabine and her husband George arrive in Trinidad, newly married and very much in love, in 1956 at the tail end of British colonial rule and the dawn of Trinidad’s Peoples’ National Movement, a grassroots political movement stressing independence and self-determination and led by a charismatic young iconoclast, Dr. Eric Williams. Sabine is immediately disenchanted with Trinidad – the heat, show more the rawness, the shameful history of racial oppression – but is just as immediately enchanted and charmed by the dashing Williams. She hears him speak, watches him move his masses of followers with his words and she is moved to begin writing him a series of intimate letters she keeps completely secret from her husband George.

Centuries of British rule have created layers of privilege and the opportunity for whites to exploit the native people and resources of Trinidad. George embraces his privileged position and begins using it for his own gain. Sabine grows to resent him for perpetuating the inequality she cannot tolerate and focuses on Eric Williams as the antithesis of her colonialist husband. Williams is lauded as the father of the country (followers call him Papa) and he embodies a hope and a promise of a better future for Trinidad’s black population. The historical facts of the novel are accurate and well-documented , so I’m not giving anything away when I tell you that Williams disappoints Sabine – and the Trinidadian people – when he fails to live up to his revolutionary promises and, instead, settles into the structures of privilege abandoned by the British. He abandons nothing and ends up, in behavior, the twin of Sabine’s husband George, not the antithesis she had imagined he would be, and, therefore, just another fuck-up. “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

To say that Sabine is an idealistic character is to severely understate the facts. She expects too much from people without understanding the internal and external forces arrayed against them. Perhaps she is all-to-human and makes the mistake of believing people will do exactly what they say they will do. When they fail her, she is quick to condemn them. I found her quite a bit slower and less harsh in ever turning that judgmental eye on herself. It is not until the very end of the story that Sabine does much more than complain about conditions and corruption in Trinidad and finally take action herself. When she does act, her actions are significant and dramatic, though you’ll have to read the novel yourself to determine whether you think they will be effective at bringing about the change she desires. Suffice to say that, agree or disagree with her, you will be effected by Sabine – her actions and attitudes will lead you to question your own attitudes about the issues at play in the novel – and that is a primary pleasure of reading this novel.

Cleverly structured, the book covers fifty years in the lives of its characters, but not in a straight line: it begins at the end, middles in the beginning and ends in the middle (opens in 2006, middles in 1956, ends in the 1970s). Beginning the book by showing us the end outcomes for its characters lends a deeper poignancy to the latter half of the book when we see the characters at an earlier time full of hope and untrammeled idealism. The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is an exciting, passion-inducing, deeply engaging book. After reading it, you may be moved to learn about the post-colonial history in Trinidad. I certainly was, and found that the country presents complexities that far surpass the country’s physical size and are still far from resolved. In a 2010 interview, Roffey revealed that the Trinidad Tourist Board wants nothing to do with the book. That’s a shame as I found that, in addition to feeling for and pulling for the characters in the book, I finished the book, like Sabine, pulling for Trinidad too. show less

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 show more 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." show less

I've just returned from over 50 years in Trinidad, in the company of George and Sabine Harwood. Like Sabine, I've been overwhelmed by the constant and debilitating sticky heat there. Like Sabine I've wondered at the extreme lushness of the vegetation, the loud and strident colours and sounds of the wildlife. Like Sabine I've been discomfited by the tense and angry political situation, which leaves many of the white population, often the women, colonial hangers-on, feeling disadvantaged (despite their very obvious economic advantages) and distressed.

In truth, I've never visited Trinidad. But so lush and evocative are Monique Roffey's descriptions of the landscape, the townscapes, the climate, the boredom, the anger: all part of the show more complex period through which she passes during her time there, that it's almost as if I have.

Sabine's homesickness for a country she would perhaps no longer recognise, her strange need to communicate with politician Eric Williams as his career rises then falls are all richly described. This is a book which will stay in the memory. show less