Redemption in Indigo

This was such a wonderful adventure!

This is not typical science fiction at all. It's part fable, part folklore with gods and tricksters interfering in the lives of humans all the while.

I loved Paama. She's a heroine who is particularly difficult to write, unassuming, stoic, quiet, steadfast, vulnerable. How Karen Lord is able to take someone so seemingly ordinary and take all the little details that make her human and show the reader how great she is.

The narrator is funny, witty, dry and breaks the fourth wall in a way that I adore.

The only reason I would give this book a lower rating is because I think there are some parts that are so, so exciting and other times there were a few lulls in the action, but I can't complain anymore than show more that.

This book is great for its subtlety, for its details, for its depth, for its warmth, for its compassion.

I'm really, really happy I read this book. show less

The exact moment I fell in love with this book was on p. 15, the paragraph that goes, "I know your complaint already. You are saying, how do two grown men begin to see talking spiders after only three glasses of spice spirit? My answer is twofold. First, you have no idea how strong spice spirit is made in that region..." Entertaining and thoughtful and damn well-written books that don't suffer from TMWP* that are also sf/f (or at least flavored by the Genre) are somewhat hard to find, and I'm getting pickier as I get older. Please, Karen Lord, keep writing, 'cause you're my new favorite. I love you just as much as I love China Mieville and Nnedi Okorafor.

* Too many white people.

This is another book that had been on my to-read list for ages, and I had seen it included on so many lists of recommended books on bookstagram and list challenges. I was literally just walking through the speculative fiction section in the library on my way to check out when this book caught my eye on the shelves and I added it to my stack.

I was so charmed from the very first sentence all the way to the last. Tricksters and immortal spirits and humans collide in a story drawing from a variety of influences, including a Senegalese folk tale, in a way that ends up feeling timeless.

Paama has run away from her husband, who is a fool and a glutton. Paama has an extraordinary gift for cooking, and also an extraordinary talent for being able show more to put up with a ridiculous level of nonsense while staying within the constraints of what is expected of her as a wife, a daughter, a woman of her community. It is for the latter gift that she attracts the attention of the undying ones, who give her a gift with extraordinary powers -- the Chaos Stick. Unfortunately, this is not the end of her challenges, but rather just the middle.

The prose is a joy and the characters are fascinating. Paama could easily be the kind of character who is so perfect and self-sacrificing that it is hard to identify with or root for her, but the no nonsense ways she does stick u0 for herself make her more interesting. And the side characters, even the most terrible of them, we gain a little empathy for by the end. and many of them grow and meet their match and turn out to be less silly than they at first seemed.

Such a satisfying tale! show less

Barbadian author Karen Lord takes the Senegalese folk tale "Ansige Karamba the Glutton" and uses it as a way of injecting her main character into her own fable of responsibility and redemption. The story is filled with Anansi tricksters, with personifications of Chance and Patience, and all the other demiurges that make the world work. It is filled with human beings, none perfect, many comical, all of whom recognizable to the reader.

It's also filled with a great deal of sly and gentle humor. Plus, of course, the moral lessons. Some readers may find the story a bit bland in the way that those sort of tales often are, and dread the inevitable Point (with a capital P). Lord knows this; as her narrator says, "There are those who utterly, show more utterly fear the dreaded Moral of the Story...Everything teaches, everyone preaches, all have a gospel to sell! Better the one who is honest and open in declaring an agenda than the one who fools you into believing that they are only spinning a pretty fancy for beauty’s sake."

To be honest, I didn't like her saying that. I prefer my parables to be unapologetic and unconfrontational about what they are: Here is what I wrote; if you like it then I'm glad and, if you didn't, then I guess you won't read my next story. Still, it didn't really diminish my enjoyment of this entertaining and humorous tale that seems surprisingly self-assured for a debut novel. There is something of the feel of oral tradition in this book, of the folk tale rather than magical realism — although darned if I know where to draw the line between those two — that appealed to me.

I hear her subsequent works are different in tone and style. I look forward to seeing what else she can do as I add her to the growing list of Caribbean authors of speculative fiction whom I appreciate. show less

LONG ASIDE: What's the difference between a "fairy tale" and a "folktale"? (And where does "myth" fit into that?) A fairy tale obviously needn't include actual fairies (is there a single Disney movie with fairies?). I have a sneaking suspicion that we (by which I mean English speakers of European descent) tend to classify as "fairy tales" stories that reflect our own cultural background and as "folktales" those that seem exotic to us. I am therefore deliberately using the term "fairy tale" in this review; I would, however, very much like to hear if others have come to the same conclusion or analyzed the distinction more knowledgeably.

OKAY, BACK TO THE POINT: This is a charming fairy tale retelling -- of what I'm told is a Senegalese show more story -- with Lord's (I am now beginning to think) characteristic sense of humor and playfulness. There are no villains, only characters with conflicting motivations. The stakes are not played as particularly high (though I guess many lives are at risk?), which was both refreshing and a bit disappointing. I finished the book thinking of it as not much more than a confection, if a pleasant one.

So: if you're new to Lord, I'd recommend starting with The Best of All Possible Worlds. If you've already read that and are impatient for the next book, you probably won't be unhappy with Redemption in Indigo. show less

Redemption in Indigo is a short novel inspired by African folklore. Paama has left her foolish and gluttonous husband, Ansige, and refuses to return to him. When he tries to win her back and instead makes a complete fool of himself, the djombi (spirits/gods) are so impressed with the way she handles the situation that they give her a gift of great power. But the djombi that it was taken from, the Indigo Lord wants it back, and badly.

I love the narrative style of this book – it takes the folktale inspiration and runs with it, it’s just like a storyteller was sitting in the room with you and telling you a story. We meander back and forth in time and point of view, and the narrator is quite opinionated at times. Paama is a terrific show more heroine, she’s calm, kind, and intuitively knows that the best thing to do with power is not use it. She’s also pragmatic – when the djombi threatens her family and asks her to give him the stick, she immediately hands it over. Of course, things aren’t that simple, since she actually has to believe that he’s the better person to wield it, and that’s the titular “redemption” of the story.

On the surface this story seems really simple, but there are a lot of layers and side plots – Anansi’s troubles with tricking people (yes, Anansi’s in this book!), Paama’s self-centered sister and her search for an eligible husband, the extremely competent House of Sisters that help Paama out. There’s not a lot of time spent of these, but they’re full of heart and the author’s deft characterization makes the characters seem like people you know pretty well.

Redemption in Indigo is very different from the other Karen Lord book I’ve read, The Best of All Possible Worlds, but it’s just as warm and well-told.
Comment show less

It's hard to sustain the cadences and colloquialisms of a traditionally told fairy tale for the length of a novel, harder still to make it accessible - indeed comfortable and charming - for the modern reader, and hardest of all if the language and culture from which the story is extracted are foreign to most of its likely audience. And yet, with Redemption in Indigo, Karen Lord has done just that. A Barbadian writer building her story from a Senegalese folk tale, the Caribbean and African rhythms thrum gently from the first page to the last. We can hear them in the amused scolding of children, feel them in the dusty warmth of the breeze, smell them in the mouthwatering odours of her heroine Paama's cooking.

Most writers in English who show more work with myth and legend as their source material are firmly based in northern European and Greek traditions; those few who have taken inspiration from what we used to call the Dark Continent have more often than not betrayed - however innocently and unintentionally - their inherited prejudices and presumptions in the way they have recrafted the material. Lord's authenticity, her delight in her characters and her sure handling of the more ambiguous and nuanced moral terrain of these tales, are a breath of fresh air. The central theme of her story is not the grandiose good vs. evil to which we have become accustomed in our modern retelling of myth; it's not even the only slightly more subtle notion of right or wrong. It is the far more real human conundrum of deciding what is better or worse from a range of less than ideal options. It's about choices and consequences, small sacrifices and self-inflicted damage, the dangers of cynicism and the redemptive power of simply trying to do your best. It's told firmly but gently, with a lot of humour and a bit of heartbreak. It's a lovely tale from a wonderful writer. I'm looking forward to more from her. show less