Thoughts on our travels through the Caribbean from the Cayman Islands to Trinidad

Cayman Islands – “Far Tortuga” by Peter Matthiessen (Score 4.5)

This is the most tedious book which I have ever read. It is written in a patois which seems to be distinguished mainly by substituting “d” for “th” in words like “that”, and “o” for “a” in words like “man”. It took a bit of getting used to and, for a non-speaker like me it distracted from what little story there is. It seemed a bit pointless to carry it on for the whole book. After all, the flavour could have come across by starting like that and then switching to Standard English.

The book is also written in a very disjointed style which made it read like a film script. We get some idea of what the characters as like as people when, on page 60, Raib complains about the evils of “modern times”, and progress, which have led to all eighteen of his children surviving. He compares this with the “good old days” when half of them could have been counted on to die by the age of ten! I pitied his poor wife – either pregnant, or recovering from pregnancy for eighteen years, and counting.

The characters are all made of cardboard, with no reality. I was dreading their boat sinking in a storm because they would dissolve into a soft mushy mess. All in all I resented every hour that reading this kept me away from something better.


Jamaica – “Homestretch” by Velma Pollard (Score 6.9)

I rather enjoyed this book. David and Edith are returning to Jamaica after thirty years in the UK. David’s retirement has been blighted by a massive stroke. There is an exchange of “irie” by the porter and the wheelchair assistant when they receive their tips. After some searching on Google I found that “irie” seems to be one of those untranslatable concepts, and very culture specific. It seems, to me as an outsider, to be something like “good”, or “cool”, or “fine”.

I found the use by Davis and Edith of the word “press”, to mean a cupboard interesting. This is in origin a Gaelic word, and is, as far as I can determine, restricted to Scotland and Ireland when speaking English. I wonder if a Scottish plantation owner had presses in his kitchen, or even an indentured bondswoman transported to Jamaica during the Highland Clearances (an early example of ethnic cleansing).

I enjoyed the split of the book into stories and sections of the different, though interrelated, people. Brenda’s story is especially enjoyable. I kept waiting for the bad side of her new friend, Anthony, to come out. I’m not going to spoil the story by telling you if it does, or not. You will have to read it for yourself. Brenda and Anthony, while travelling about, show us a lot about the lifestyle of reasonably prosperous people in Jamaica at the time. There is a lot of information about places, about the food and music, birds, trees, etc. An internet search showed pictures of most of those, and some of the places mentioned. This all added to my enjoyment of the book. Brenda’s grandmother says, when talking about a neighbour, “Joy will be well hungry when she come”. I have noticed this use of “well” in the speech of young people in the UK recently.


Cuba – “View of Dawn in the Tropics” by G Cabrera Infante (Score 5.13)

This book can’t truly be called a novel. The only story is that of how the peoples of Cuba, of whichever race, have suffered dreadfully for generations. It comprises many vignettes which might be based on rumour, history, anecdote, newspaper reports etc. There is some humour, but there is much more horror, resulting from the treatment of revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, peasants, natives, women, slaves, mothers. I found it an immensely moving book, though it has to be said that none of the other members liked it because of the unremitting horror. Haiti – “The Farming of Bones” by Edwidge Danticat (Score 7.8) We are straight into the thick of things. The book opens with two lovers and, within a few pages, moves to the graphically described birth of twins to an upper class descendent of the Conquistadors (those peasant butchers who destroyed the cultures of the native peoples in South and Central America and the Caribbean, and enslaved them). She is Valencia. Annabelle, Valencia’s servant, helps her during the birth. Annabelle’s “paramour” is Sebastian. On the way to the house by car Pico, the father is driving far too fast. He hits, and kills, a peasant on the road, knocking him into the ravine. Pico doesn’t seem bothered by this. We wonder if the irony is that it may be Sebastian. Beatriz’s father, her Papi, is also in the car but doesn’t make Pico stop and search in the ravine for the man he hit. The next day we clearly see a simmering resentment among the local men as they talk about the death. Is this a harbinger of things to come? Then there is another tragedy when Baby Rafi, the boy twin, dies after a few days of life. Racism raises its ugly head again when Pico destroys all his wife’s fine cups and saucers because she served coffee in them to the cane cutters. I may be imagining it, but I feel a sense of impending disaster in the text. Then there are rumours that the President has told people, and the army, to start killing Haitians who live in the Dominican Republic side of the border. Valencia’s father has gone missing – but he is a Dominican. He returns eventually, having made a wooden memorial cross for the cane-cutter killed by Pico. The tension mounts. Annabelle heads for the border with Sebastian’s friend Yves, hoping to find Sebastian and his sister Mimi. In the mountains they see the smoke from a burning village, inhabited by Haitian cane cutters. The danger increases. I didn’t realise how caught up I was in the story of Annabelle’s and Yves’ escape to Haiti until my eyes started to prickle, and my throat caught, when Yves was reunited with his mother. Will Sebastian and Mimi turn up? Will Annabelle marry Sebastian eventually? Will she marry Yves? The word “perejil” plays the role of a shibboleth in that the Haitians cannot, in general, pronounce the Spanish “j” correctly. “Shibboleth”, meaning “ear of corn”, was used in the biblical book of Judges to justify the massacre by the Gideanites of the Ephramites, who could not pronounce the “sh”. Guess what happened to anyone who mispronounced “perejil”. Dominican Republic – “In the time of the butterflies” by Julia Alvarez (Score 8.5) This book is told in four voices, one for each sister. The author distinguishes well between them, especially that of the ten year old Maria Teresa near the beginning. On page 53 there is a mention of the massacre of thousands of Haitian migrants near the border. This formed part of the story in our last selection “The Farming of Bones” by Edwidge Danticat. This book is interesting all the way through. It is a slow burner, but is all the more tense for that as time slips past the Cuban revolution (which causes great joy among a large part of the Dominican population). We read of the setting up of the underground resistance by the sisters when they are older. They are now known as Las Mariposas (the butterflies of the title). We read of their rounding up and imprisonment, along with many innocent friends and family members. Although there is little mention of torture we know that it has happened. The Organisation of American States intervenes, and the butterflies (but not their menfolk)are released into house arrest. Eventually the OAS apply sanctions to the country with a view of punishing Trujillo. Even the American embassy was being closed. I got one of those eye-prickling emotional moments near the end when the telegram man handed the message to Dede, and turned his back to her “because a man can’t be seen crying”. It lasted for several pages after that, and again when I was typing this up weeks later. You should search on the net for photos of the sisters. It is fascinating. There are postage stamps, photos of there weddings, of their husbands, of the houses which form part of the story. Puerto Rico - The house in the lagoon - Rosario Ferre (Score 7.25) We get a good introduction to Puerto Rico with descriptions of the landscape, the swamps, and then the carnival, and later on throughout the book we learn of the history of the country. Unfortunately, there is a lot of repetition in the writing. Even by page 27 I had lost count of the number of times a man or a boy was described as having “eyes so blue they make you want to sail out to sea”. This may be an idiom, but it grated. The translator could have done better. The next bit is real purple prose. The carnival queen is thinking about each (and I mean each) part of her body in terms of food and spices. She has a marzipan throat, cream-puff shoulders, cinnamon feet, a delicate ginger … This is dreadful stuff, and gave me a bad feeling about what the rest of the book might be like. On page 93 I liked Madeleine’s image of “squeezed cloud juice” for water. On page 124 there is evidence of exploitation of the peasants when the sugar mill owners (Americans) used their influence in Washington to defeat the efforts of the American Governor of Puerto Rico to improve the wages of the workers. We have seen the exploitation of, and brutality against, the colonised peoples by all of the European countries who had colonies, and by many Asian countries. Now we are seeing it applied by the Land of the Free in exploitation by Big Business, and the murder of peaceful protestors at the order of the replacement American Governor. I researched this – it happened. At one of the balls given by her husband, Buenaventura, Rebecca reveals herself as being a rabid racist when she deliberately knocks the hat from the head of the mother of Esmeralda (the girl whom her son is courting). Many of the other women at the ball laugh uproariously at the curly hair revealed by this. Rebecca’s son, Quintin, many years later, shows the same disgusting nature when he prohibits his son Manuel from marrying Coral because she is the daughter of Esmeralda, a mulatto. He rants about his “pure” Spanish blood, “with no Arab, Jewish or Black blood in it”, he says, and continues “thousands died to keep it that way”. He claims to be descended directly from the Conquistador, Pizarro. Pizarro was a pig farmer in Spain, and moved on to being a butcher in South America, being responsible for the massacre of thousands of Native Americans. Ironically, Pizarro was no more “pure-blooded” than anyone else, being descended from the African mitochondrial Eve, just like the rest of us. As a direct result of Quintin’s intolerance, Manuel leaves home and Quintin’s family and world begin to break up. Over the last hundred or so pages I found this book increasingly tedious though the last ten pages led the author towards a high at the ending. There was a Manderley scene, or perhaps House of Usher, with the complete break-up of Quintin’s world – deservedly. To be fair, not all of the members of the group agreed with my feelings about the bad writing and tedium. My score was second lowest. Antigua – “Lucy” by Jamaica Kincaid (Score 6.5) We don’t know where this girl woman has come from. Only later in the book do we get a vague “West Indies”, with a possible clue from the presence of a small French-speaking island nearby. We don’t know where the story takes place, or which of the Great Lakes is involved. That at least pins it down to either Canada or the United States. Until page 149 we wouldn’t even know her name if it wasn’t on the front cover. She is working for, and staying with, Lewis and Mariah, looking after their five children, so at least we know their names. The train journey to whichever of the Great Lakes is involved takes about 24 hours. We have the story of a young girl growing into a young woman, discovering herself and relationships. Sometimes she seems not to like herself very much. She is angry, though occasionally she tries to hold it back. She is especially angry with her mother because her mother “loves her too much”. She loves, but at the same time hates, her mother. This anger drove her to leave home in the first place. She is not a likeable person. Despite her personality flaws I liked, and enjoyed, this book though it is not great literature by any means. Guadeloupe – “Tree of Life” by Maryse Condé (Score 6.2) I really enjoyed this book, but I wish I had started to keep a family tree to help me track the story, and the people, through the years. Albert works on a sugar plantation on the French island of Guadeloupe. The workers are not slaves but, with the pittance they work for, the way they have to live, and the conditions they work in, they may as well be. Albert is an angry man who wants to leave and is determined to do so. The only thing which stops him is his poverty. Then he hears about the need for labour to build the Panama Canal, where workers apparently earn 90 cents an hour. He goes there somehow. He soon realises that things are no better in Panama. The conditions are dreadful, there is an extremely high death rate, and there is segregation of everything with signs everywhere saying “Reserved for Whites”. Albert moves in with Liza who later dies giving birth to their first child, Bert. Albert takes his son home to his mother on Guadeloupe and heads back to Panama for a few more years, saving every cent he can. Massacres of Negroes begin. Albert and his friend Jacob leave by boat, suffering humiliation when they are put out of their cabin (with no refund) at the insistence of the white passengers. They arrive in San Francisco. Jacob is brutally murdered in a racist attack by three rednecks. Why do curs always hunt in packs? Are they afraid of one on one? This moving story goes on through the generations of Albert’s family. We see racism, both white on black, and black on white. We also see, among the often casual racism, unexpected acts of kindness such as when the merchants give food to Bert, Albert’s son, whose wife is pregnant and unable to work. The claim at page 190- that Tima, on Guadeloupe, felt her daughter Thecla’s labour pains (though Thecla was in France), and even had a bloody discharge (although she was past the menopause) when Thecla had a miscarriage seemed very far-fetched. There had been no correspondence between the two women since Thecla left the island. We hear much of various black freedom movements in the Caribbean, all of it new to me. That’s not a part of the world I know much about. This book has persuaded me to change that. There are also movements to stop intermarriage with whites. I consider that to be as racist as any similar ideas expounded by whites or, indeed, by any other group. We experience a fierce and devastating hurricane, and then a more sedate time during which our narrator, Coco, makes a new friend at school. Melissa is a little white girl. Coco visits Melissa’s home. They go to the kitchen where they start a meal, They are enjoying roast lamb together, with all the trimmings, and their first glass of wine. Then the author punches us right in the face when we least expect it and our defences are down. Melissa’s mother comes raging into the kitchen and orders Coco to leave the house, in the most vile racist language. After we have recovered from that the author starts to draw together the various threads running through the story, and reaches her conclusion. Dominica – “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys (Score 7.25) This is the story of Antoinette, a young Creole girl living in Coulibri, a large run-down house in Jamaica. Fairly quickly into the story the house in burned down by the local villagers because Antoinette’s family are white, even if poor white. They are still reminders of the slaving days. The family has to leave. Antoinette, a teenager, is put into a convent school. There seems to be some confusion in the text here. On page 31 Antoinette says that she seldom sees her step-father, who was often away for months. On page 33, at the top, she says that, during the eighteen months she was at this school, he came often to see her, and he gave her presents. Or is this, perhaps, an early harbinger of Antoinette’s future madness? As part Two starts, we now have a change of voice. The narrator is an unnamed man, married to Antoinette. We are still in, or back in, Jamaica in the pouring rain. They are on honeymoon, leaving Jamaica for the Windward Islands. They married a month after he arrived in Jamaica (and he was ill with fever for three weeks of that time. This feels to me like an arranged marriage. After a period of what seems like an idyllic life together, Antoinette’s nameless husband receives a letter (not anonymous as you might think at first) warning him about the background of Antoinette’s family and that he should expect her to go mad like her mother. Her bought husband takes this letter at face value, and his attitude to Antoinette begins to change, quickly. He gets lost in the jungle in the middle of a walk to think things through. He is rescued. Shortly after, we become Antoinette again about halfway through the book. We move back to Mr Nameless who goes to see Daniel, the man who sent the letter. Daniel tells him more about Antoinette and her family. Why is he doing this? Is his story true? We don’t know yet, but we don’t want it to be true. After all, we have been in Antoinette’s head for so many pages, and we don’t feel mad. Antoinette tells her husband her side of the story of her mother. They have a glass of wine and go to bed. He wakes in the middle of the night, violently sick. He thinks Antoinette has poisoned him. If she had I think that we, inside her head, would have known about it. He runs off into the jungle again, ending up at Coulibri. After he makes his way back the servant woman, Amelie, is waiting for him with food. He takes her to bed, the rats. The nameless one has decided to leave. The cook leaves. The overseer stays. The husband’s behaviour makes Antoinette hate him, where once she loved him. He finally admits he does not love her. I almost felt some sympathy for him when he realised that he had been bought by his father and Antoinette’s father. Then, as he begins his long thought of hatred of Antoinette, of everything to do with her, of the island, and of his determination to destroy her mind, we know what an evil man he is. He succeeds in his plan since Antoinette is quite mad at the end of the story, and **** SPOILER ALERT **** is the mad woman in the attic in the “sequel” by Charlotte Bronte. Interestingly, Rochester is nowhere named in this book and, if you didn’t already know Jane Eyre you probably wouldn’t pick up the various clues which point to “Wide Sargasso Sea” being the prequel to “Jane Eyre”. If you have read Jane Eyre, or already know the relationship between the books, may I suggest that you try very hard to read “Wide Sargasso Sea” without thinking about Jane Eyre? I hope you enjoy “Wide Sargasso Sea” as much as I did, and that you read “Jane Eyre” with a fresh outlook next time. Martinique – “Texaco” by Patrick Chamoiseau (Score 5.4) This book is another set on an island where there is no more slavery since the colonial power (France) has finally seen sense and abolished it. The people we meet live in a shanty town slum clustered round the derelict site of an oil terminal outside “City”. The city officials want to demolish the shanty town to “improve” its land. We don’t yet know if this is for altruistic reasons, or financial. For the first time on our world trip we get some idea of how the slaves sabotaged the plantations, and their output, thus reducing the owners’ income. Animals died, crops died, no slave women gave birth. The master imposed harsh punishment on the innocents because they could not find those who had fought back. Unfortunately, after this promising start, “Texaco” deteriorated rapidly. It became verbose and disjointed, and frankly extremely tedious to read. It is a big book of nearly four hundred pages, pretty well unreadable. Since this was a book group selection I persevered, but about half way through I finally gave in and skimmed for about another fifty pages. Eventually I did something which I have never done in my life before – I totally abandoned the book. I cannot recommend this book to anyone. Barbados – “In the Castle of my Skin” by George Lamming (Score 6.6) Pa and Ma are the oldest couple in the village, and are called that by everyone. It reminds me of when I was a kid. An old lady lived on our tenement stair. She was Aunty Peggy to the whole street, and everyone loved her. The book opens on G’s ninth birthday. The heavy rain has flooded the village, moved houses on their foundations, and even swept one away down the river. Still, everything seems quiet and calm. We get some idea of the village. It comprises board-wood houses laid out on a grid, with shops at the street intersections. There is gas street lighting. G and his mother have at least one oil lamp. He has a bed, a pillow and a bought (or presented) sheet. The roof leaks. On page 27 we find that the village people dislike the landlord’s overseers. This isn’t because they are brutal. It is simply that they are also villagers, but have “gone up in life”. It reminds me of the “Aa kent his faither” (I knew his father) attitude prevalent in parts of my native Scotland towards someone who has been guilty of upwardly social mobility. We see how events in the village, apart from major things like floods, are pretty much the same, day in, day out. Why aren’t they bored to tears? Is it because they don’t know anything else? There are two voices in the book. The authorial voice tells us what is happening when G is not there. In this voice the villagers speak their patois rather than standard English. We can see that they have so much lost contact with, and memory of, their roots that they deny that their ancestors could ever have come from Africa. The other voice is that of G. He speaks standard English throughout, as does his mother when she is talking to him. His mother tends to patois when she is punishing him for misbehaving, or if others can hear her. On page 111, the nine year old G does what nine year olds do. He watches, and imagines, human, animal and natural shapes in the clouds. I loved G’s description of the feeling of an ear full of water when he comes out after swimming in the sea (page 112). I’ve been there. So too, I enjoyed his description of Venus, the Morning Star. “It seemed a solid, four pointed flame that would crack under the hammer and scatter from the blow into a million splinters, each remaining solid and steady like the star itself. This is beautiful, and it is exactly what we see. However it doesn’t seem to be what a nine year old with a basic education, living in a remote village, would write. It is a distillation of the nine year old’s feelings through the prism of the memory of the 26 year old he has become, who is telling the story. These little gems of description are among the things which I enjoyed about this book. There is a fascinating description of an outdoor revivalist meeting at which a seven year old boy, totally confused, is being urged to confess his sins so as to be “received” into the “light”. Then at page 169 we have the young boys in the story (G and his friends) struggling to understand the concept of a slot machine where “you put something called a “dime” in one hole and a plate of food comes out of another”. As Arthur C Clarke said “Sufficiently advanced science seems like magic to us”. On page 186 we hear about the “poor whites” who all come from a place called Scotland. I presume this may be an effect of the Highland and Lowland Clearances. This was an early example of ethnic cleansing when the landlords drove the people away to make room for grazing the more profitable sheep. On page 187 three innocent young village boys are accused of sexually assaulting the landlord’s daughter. We know they are innocent since we were with them. The landlord’s daughter and a sailor were in flagrante delicto when the boys ran into them while escaping from the overseer. The sailor, to protect himself and the girl, immediately told people that he had rescued her from the boys. Of such lies and self interest dreadful things are often the result. Later we find that the landlord has “sold” the village land and that the new “owners” are attempting to move the villagers who live on the land which has been “sold”. How did the landlord come to think that he “owned” the land? By taking it from the people who lived there before Europeans arrived. This is the same situation as in Scotland where people “own” land which was “sold” to their ancestors, or “given” to them by someone, usually a king who never had any right to the land except by virtue of some dubious so-called right of conquest. To summarise, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it. Grenada – “Under the Silk Cotton Tree” by Jean Buffong (Score 5.76) This book is set in Grenada, told by a young girl in local patois. I suspect that it could be well toned down from normal because it is reasonably easy to follow after a few pages. It certainly gives you a feeling of being in an exotic place. The young girl is Flora. She “has eight years”. While this is the standard way of telling age in Italian, and doesn’t seem at all odd, it comes across as being strange in English. It’s constant use helps to maintain the feeling of difference in the story. When the old, very popular priest retired back to Ireland a young priest, still in training, took his place. He isn’t as popular, and there are soon accusations against him by some young women. Innocent or guilty, he is moved to another parish. There seems to be a deep belief among some of the villagers about magic and supernatural beings. There is obeah; there are shape-changers (lougarou – from the French for werewolf), and other creatures. There are further traces from when Grenada was a French colony. There is the use of “Tanty” for “aunt”, and other words which clearly derive from French. I even wonder if the author’s name is of French origin. The book comprises a series of vignettes about various aspects of the life of the village people in Grenada, life, death, marriage, celebrations. There is one particularly funny bit, set in the cemetery on All Saints’ Night when Flora and her family are lighting candles for the family graves. Suddenly they see strange lights dancing over the graves at the centre of the cemetery, accompanied by strange whooshing sounds. They are terrified, thinking this is a case of lougarou. Then Ann, one of the family party, shouts out that … I won’t spoil the surprise for you. Read the book. It’s not great literature, but I think you’ll enjoy it. I did. Trinidad – “In the Heat of the Day” by Michael Anthony (Score 6.74) It is 1903 and we are in Trinidad, listening to Eva and Clement discussing the upcoming bill to charge ordinary people for water consumption. The people imposing this are the colonial masters, completely unelected, but seemingly crooked. At one time Eva talks about the fact that the Trinidadian people are uneducated, because that’s the way the masters want it. She says “You see, Clem, these overlords have to keep us in ignorance in order to rule. We mustn’t get too wise”. We find out that water is to be charged for to reduce waste, but we don’t yet know if there is waste, or if this is a made up reason. We spend considerable time in the company of the “antis” as they work out their plans to disrupt the proceedings and prevent the bill being passed at three readings, as is required by law. They want to do this by legal means. We spend time with the “pros”, together with senior police, as they work out ways to prevent the protestors even gaining access. They make a pretence of telling the police that they have to be impartial, but it is clear where the police sympathies lie. They keep talking about “stopping these people”. The police are to be armed, stationed in the debating hall and around the building, but have to open fire “only in dire necessity” – the decision being made by them. The text is Dickensian, with very detailed conversations going on for pages. This book is a slow burner, but the tension mounts steadily as the day of the first reading approaches. The climax of the first reading is when the brutal policeman, Sergeant Holden, takes the opportunity to beat severely one of the protesters against whom he has a particular grudge. On the weekend before the second reading, key supporters of the “antis” are arrested for no other reason than that they are “anti”. During the attempted second reading Sergeant Holden deliberately stabs a young girl in the stomach with his bayonet, claiming she was attacking him. We were there – we know she was not. Holden takes advantage of the confusion to murder a number of people he dislikes, and some he just decides to murder. Colonel Blake witnessed the last cold-blooded killing, of a woman who used to live with Holden but left him because he beat her. I don’t hold out much hope that Blake will bear witness against Holden. This month we move back to Europe -Iceland - The Fish Can Sing - Halldor Laxness (Score 7.0) See my comments at "Thoughts on Europe from Iceland to"