Red Jacket

by Pamela Mordecai

Growing up as part of a large, loving family on the Caribbean island of St. Chris, Grace Carpenter is happy but puzzled about her identity. Although her extended family is black, she is a redibo, with copper-coloured skin, freckles, reddish hair, and grey eyes. Sometimes she gets called names, but the question of why she is different is never explained.

As this masterful novel unfolds, we gradually learn the story of Grace's birth mother, just a teenager herself, and why Grace was adopted by the Carpenters. As she grows and prospers, she is still plagued by the mystery surrounding her birth and a yearning to understand her heritage and who she truly is.

Genres: Canada, Fiction, Africa, Ebooks

464 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2015

About the author

Pamela Mordecai was born in Jamaica. She has published five collections of poetry, five children's books, a book of short fiction, and a reference work on Jamaica (with her husband, Martin). She has also edited/coedited anthologies of Caribbean writing as well as numerous textbooks In 2010, her play, "El Numero Uno" had its world premiere at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto. Her poems have been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Award for Poetry and the Bridport Prize (UK). She is the recipient of The Institute of Jamaica’s Centenary Medal, Jamaica’s Vic Reid Award for Children’s Writing, and the Burla Award. Pamela lives in Kitchener.

Reviews

[Friederike Knabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of family and belonging, of searching for that belonging and growing into more than one culture. Sounds complex and multifaceted? It is. Spanning from one fictional island in the Caribbean to a fictional small country situated between Mali and Burkina Faso, the author explores real issues and landscapes, populates her story with many plausible characters and follows her characters in their human struggles, physical, emotional and spiritual. An important theme is how faith and religion are experienced and lived differently, individually and in different cultures.

The novel's central character is Grace, whose life we accompany intimately from her early childhood on. Surrounded by a loving family, she feels nonetheless like something of an outsider once she leaves the safety of her home. Pamela Mordecai provides the reader with knowledge and insights that the growing Grace will only later discover. For example, Grace does not really resemble her parents: her skin tone is lighter, her hair softer with a reddish shine... The story's timelines move into futures to introduce other protagonists that are or become relevant for Grace's life. The narrative voice changes accordingly.

Pamela Mordecai, born and raised in Jamaica and living in Canada, has an impressive ability to match the language nuances with her characters. Well known for her poetry (and children's literature), her lyrical language has filtered effortlessly into her prose where it is appropriate and enhances dialogue or atmospheric setting. Adding to the plausibility of the story and to emphasize its deeper cultural relevance, the author evokes realistic surroundings and customs in her fictional countries, St. Christopher and Mabuli. Her introductory note explains her reasoning for the use of fictional places that nonetheless closely resemble real countries or regions. She uses a plethora of colloquial terms of the respective region and provides a useful glossary at the end of the book. Personally, I appreciated this linguistic touch. Being familiar with the actual West African setting that forms the basis for Mordecai's Mabuli, I enjoyed the extensive descriptions. For some readers the level of detail here and elsewhere in the novel may be overwhelming and somewhat distracting from the main threads.

[Juniper · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting reading experience this book was for me. Mordecai's novel (her first one) is definitely a smart and accomplished work, though the themes are pretty heavy, and there are many layers within the story. Mordecai has had success as a poet, evidenced in her wonderful writing style - I definitely enjoyed how she played with language in Red Jacket and it was some impressive linguistic gymnastics, to be sure. Mordecai is a master!

I also really appreciate the lens she offers on such important social/societal issues like feminism, racism, religion, and health epidemics (HIV/AIDS in this book). I feel like this is required reading, a work that resonated with importance for me as I was working my way through it.

My only 'Yes, but...' with the novel is the ending - and I mean the very, very end of the book. Approaching the mid-way point of the book, and after a good long time with the main character of Grace Carpenter, the narrative shifted to two other characters, James and Mark. Initially it felt a bit awkward and clunky - it did end up coming together well. But the final page of the book just didn't work so well for me. (Actually, I had some 'Yes, but...' moments with Mark's wife, Mona, too.) But I do feel like this story and these characters will sit with me for a time. And I may even revisit the final chapter to give it more thought and closer consideration.

A finalist for the 2015 Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, this is the jury citation:

"Pamela Mordecai’s Red Jacket is a richly rewarding reading experience, a lyrical nod to the impossibility, and even wrongness, of reducing lives to chronology or to one or two crystalizing moments. Myriad points of view, a variety of englishes, and a wise and smartly handled fractured timeline are mined to unearth the powerful story of Grace Carpenter and to gather up and pay homage to the village that constitutes her community, at home and abroad. This book is more than a heartbreaking, beautiful story; it is also a bawdy meditation on storytelling and the art of writing. "

I enjoyed this moment in an interview with Mordecai, from Open Book Toronto:

OB:
Is there a question that is central to your book, thematically? And if so, did you know the question when you started writing or did it emerge from the writing process?

PM:
The book raises all kinds of questions, but the central one perhaps concerns the extent to which we are in charge of our own destiny. Do we direct our lives, or are we the victims of a fate handed to us, over which we have little control? Are our lives determined by where we are born, the circumstances of that birth, who our parents are, the quality of our education, the opportunities life offers us and so on? I wouldn’t say I had that question in my mind when I started. I had a vague idea that I wanted to put the female protagonist through the wringer, to see how she’d endure the battering, but I think the Big Question emerged in the writing.

[Megz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Red Jacket is exceptionally hard to review. Although I didn’t give it very highly-starred rating, I think this is an exquisite, many-layered work of fiction.

Pamela Mordecai created two fictional nations for this book: St. Chris, a small Caribbean Island, and Mabuli, a country in Sahelian Africa. This is the first feat, as she has formed these countries intimately and uniquely, with their own blends of languages.

Much of the book is written in various degrees of Creole, which was pleasant and lilting to read. It reminded me a bit of the way The Country of Ice Cream Star was written, but that of Red Jacket was definitely easier to understand.
I adored the first section of the book. Reading about Gracie growing up on the plantation in St. Chris, and the letters sent by her birth mother every year on her birthday. I loved the relationship between Grace and her Gramps, and it was possible to see Phyllis growing from a barely-educated and scared twelve-year-old to a self-assured young woman.

The book is also historically accurate, with many mentions of people and events that happened during Grace’s lifetime, with special attention to the civil rights movement in the USA with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jnr. Sometimes if felt a bit excessive, though.

I started enjoying the book less at about 22% in, when track changed suddenly to Mabuli with little introduction. For a long time after that, there was switching between Mabuli, the University of Antilles, and Grace, wherever she found herself at the time. These flashes had little connection to one another and I felt they were poorly crafted. I kept reading because I was interested in Grace’s comings and goings, but I failed to have any interest in Jimmy and Mark.

The book has sections with pages upon pages of dialogue, which I felt was excessive. There is a lot of “telling and not showing”, and sometimes it felt like I was reading a historical record rather than fiction.

Although I obviously loved Grace’s involvement with HIV research, I’m not so sure that everything gelled. I just felt that a LOT was happening in this book and that it could have been more focused.

That said, it probably didn’t help that NetGalley categorised the book as “New Adult”. When I read that I thought, “YES! A New Adult book that doesn’t focus on sex!” but of course, it really wasn’t a New Adult book at all. It is certainly more contemporary, and if I had known that going in, perhaps my experience of the book itself would have been wholly different.

The conclusion was unsatisfying for me, but at least it gave me something to mull over. The cover I thought was gorgeous, and I did enjoy reading about the Caribbean.

There is no doubt that Mordecai is a great writer, but there was definitely something amiss in this book, for me.

Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

She off-loads her cargo of grief, the burden of a self that she now judges to be ruined at the root: Grace the dump pikni; the red jacket in a black family; the child too terrified to open her mouth; the sibling with a sister who disclaimed her; the misfit at St. Chad's.

The beginning of Red Jacket was certainly intriguing: We meet Grace Carpenter, a little girl living on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Chris who has a close relationship with her large family and especially with her Gramps; a man whose voice has a “deep, sweet sound” from “long life, white rum, and years of singing in the gospel choir”; with wisdom, education, and a morality built from grappling with his God, Gramps is probably my favourite character of all. Grace herself feels like an outcast – she's the best student in a family that values academics, but as her freckled bronze skin and smooth red hair make her stand out from everyone else's dark colouring, she must endure the whispers of unkind neighbours; those who would infer that Grace is “ 'a jacket', unsanctified fruit of a union between Pa and some red woman.” Interspersed with chapters detailing Grace's developing years are letters from a woman in NYC who, along with Gramps, keep the secret of Grace's true origins. As I said, this beginning bit is very interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed the way that author Pamela Mordecai was able to evoke life in various settings around St. Chris.

When Grace moves to Toronto for university, however, this book starts to become something else – after years of being discriminated against for being too light, Grace is suddenly too dark among her fellow students at the U of T and she must endure discrimination, dismissal, and constant rudeness from staff and students alike. I don't know if this was based on Mordecai's experience after emigrating from Jamaica, but it felt tedious and overblown. For example: when Grace writes a respectful letter to the editor describing the death of a little boy from starvation and wondering if he fell through the cracks because he was black, the immediate blowback was other letters saying, “If you don't like Canada you ungrateful immigrant, there's the door”. But reading and rereading the original letter, I can't see anything that would have identified “Grace Carpenter” as an immigrant, so the whole setup fell apart for me; and if I can't believe the big things, I won't believe the small. In Toronto, Grace finds and joins a wonderful church, but then stops going for no reason. She initially spurns her roommate's attempts at friendship. She finds out who her birth mother is but doesn't want a relationship. Every bad thing that happens to her, Grace blames on wiley Papa God. And I'm supposed to have empathy for her disconnectedness?

In between chapters about Grace, we also have some from the point-of-view of Jimmy (a Jesuit who has visions of the future) and Mark (Chancellor of a Caribbean bank, some kind of NGO). As Mark's sections happen in the future, we get a glimpse of what kind of work Grace is educating herself for and the timeline jumps around until all three of these characters meet up in the end. I don't tend to be confused by time jumping, but when you throw in someone with premonitions, the whole thing can get messy. The first time Jimmy had a seizure, I had no idea that his vision was meant to be a premonition, and when the manner of his wife's death wasn't revealed for hundreds of pages, I had no idea that that was supposed to have been a premonition of her death. As the Mark character didn't really matter in the big picture, and as his story wasn't fascinating in the details, I don't know why his sections are even in the book.

Mordecai is primarily known as a poet (Red Jacket is her first novel), and while there was some lovely writing, there were many passages that I simply found confusing:

Gatekeepers. Their visitor misunderstood about the gatekeepers and the palm greasing. G words – gatekeepers, grease. Is it narrow, western, stupid? Why is the greed always in African governments, never in the European lust for gold, oil, diamonds? Why is it never in the foreign letch for immoral local partners in depredation? Perish the thought! That's good business, not greed.

Note the exclamation mark there! I don't know if I've ever read a book that contained more exclamations! Often, dialogue read like a police interview transcript. Events happen late in the book that don't seem to have had any foundation laid for them, and while the ending has some very interesting writing, I found it unsatisfying. I appreciate Mordecai's efforts to describe both the Caribbean and African settings in detail, but too often details felt crammed in and not organic to the story flow:

The sun, set upon by feisty grey clouds, isn't giving in. It elbows its way to a thin splinter in the murk, breaking through in an apostrophe of pure light that falls on his father's most recent undertaking, a grove of red sorrel. Funny, he thinks of it by its St. Chris name, sorrel, rather than bissap, the name they give it in West Africa. Bissape is a popular drink in Mabuli. Sappi is a beer brewed from the flowers of the plant.

And I found it strange to cram in all these facts about two fictional locations – I may have appreciated Red Jacket more if St. Chris and Mabuli actually existed. I feel bad that I didn't much enjoy this book, especially after thinking that the opening was so charming. It's not a total waste of time, but Red Jacket wouldn't get a very high recommendation from me.

[Tia]

I received an advanced reader copy from Dundurn via Netgalley

I don't know if I'll continue. I've completely lost interest in the plot and the characters. The story is drifting, not glued together anymore. I don't know... I have too many other books to get to and this one is taking me forever. I'm trying to find other things to do to ignore it. It may get better but will it be worth it? The reviews thus far are good. I guess it's just me.

I didn't pick this book back up. It's just not for me.

[Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a long, cold winter I was ready to escape to a warm island and the “Red Jacket” transported me to the delightful Caribbean island of St. Chris. Grace, who was adopted into a large, loving family still wants to know about her birth mother and why she was given up for adoption. Grace’s story, her strong bond with Gramps, and the story of Grace’s biological mother were absorbing, compelling, and full of heart felt emotions. This wasn’t just an island escape, but a moving novel about what constitutes a family.

Thank you to Dundurn, Thomas Allen Publishers, and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is full of meaty characters and the dialect is beautifully written so the reader is immersed in the culture. Grace is a curious little girl who is a misfit in her own dark skinned family. Peculiar with her red hair and skin different from her siblings she is left to ponder her origins. Gramps is her rock, full of heart and wisdom. As she thinks, Gramps could give lessons to Papa God. He is also the bearer of the burden carrying the truth of her origins. Suddenly, handing over her birth mother's letters it's up to her to figure out what to do with this knowledge.
The time we spend with her is full of letters from her mother, a blossoming education, love and deep losses. She will find herself working with Aids/Hiv patients, she will find love and even harbor her own secrets, much like her birth mother. Reviewing this intelligently told story isn't easy, because while it starts as a coming of age it veers off into deeper subjects and provocative territory. Everyone in it has a rich story and many are entangled in each other. Quite the read!

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grace is not always likeable and that is a tough choice and one that Mordecai did very well. But she is someone I love, value, and admire. She is also a wonderful woman who dies much too young, and not from HIV/AIDS which is what you would expect. Or is necrotizing fasciitis a complication? In any event, her death is done well, the future of her son is complicated, her life mattered, her story is a story of complexity. Beautiful book, well written, and it ENDS.
"It is dark now. The sun has gone down, or the lights have gone out. She hears sounds, women singing softly, a lullaby perhaps. There is a procession: Granny Vads and Grandma Elsie; Ma and Phyllis and Daphne; Pansy and Princess and Pansy's girls; Miss Constance and Mrs. Sampson; Miss Carmen, Miss Glosmie, Miss Isolene, and Mrs. Buxton; Reverand Douglas; Mrs. Scott and Stephanie and Susie; Felicity and Babs; Maisie and Sylvia; Sister Monique and Sister Tekawitha, Elise and Lili; Amitié and Azzara; Joyce Zaidie-Klein; Mona Blackman; even Mrs. Sommersby.
The woman who leads them wears a red sari spotted with drops of something, wine or oil or blood. Each person in the line holds onto the sari, which stretches longer and longer as more women join, walking up a path covered with petals of red, purple, yellow, and orange. The leader is someone she knows, but the wind blows sheets of sand across the line of singers so she can't see who it is.
At the edge of the desert in Mabuli, dunes flare and subside, one minute lit by a ferocious sun, the next dragged down into the swell of dark night sands. A small boy is in a boat, oars in his hands, silver pinpricks of sweat on his face. Two men push the boat from behind, white haired, white bearded. One is black, and one is white. They melt into each other, and change, and change again. A tall black man lifts the child from the boat and hoists him over his shoulder. He has been weeping. Tears leak from under his long lashes into the tiny indentations that pattern his cheek before they spill again, myriad eyes. The child wraps his arms round the man's neck. The door of her room opens and, as they come in, she sees them both, clearly.
'Jimmy? Jeremiah? Don't cry!' She opens her arms. 'Come to your Mama!'
The boy, a bird, a kite, lands on her bed in half a second, trailing his limbs about her.
'Kidoki!'
She folds her arms around her son, but he isn't there. She looks up, but the weeping man with the scarred cheeks is gone. Never mind, she thinks as she closes her eyes, she will see them soon. When she does, maybe she'll get back into the ring with Papa God. It was Gramps way, after all, hassling with the Almighty Father. Perhaps it might work for her too."

Nice to think about, and there are many attributes of cats. There is a close connection between cats and their people and sickness and death. I can see this happening.
"'Once upon a time, Giacomo, there was a cat called Ascension that lived in a home for old priests in Assisi. Anytime it climbed into the bed of one of the old men, he died within days. People swore it had a demon, but the priests loved the cat, welcomed her putting them on notice, so they could have the last rites, summon their families, say goodbye.' Mucelli suggested Jimmy might be like the cat who knew and loved the old men so well that she breathed in tandem with their lives. For sure Mapome and he had been thick as thieves. As for Nila, whom he'd loved more than life, if what killed her on that snowy hillside was some infirmity he'd intuited, he'd have some peace. And this time, Grace."

Nicely put, and puts meditation into perspective, although meditation is a good thing.
"'A stone garden, my beloved. You're meant to rake the stones and be soothed.'
'Oh. A meditative raking of stones! My life, absent the meditative part.'
'Mine too. Lots of us have lives of raking stones, or lives raked by stones.'"

Nice description of the night outside, very evocative, very visceral.
"She is hugging a robe around her when she lets him in. Invited to sit, he chooses a chair by the door. Birds honk, squawk, whirr like rusty machinery. Fat bugs bounce against the window screen."

James's Mapome (grandmother?) is to him what Gramps is to Grace. She has great wisdom and she taught him the Wordplay game. And this is stunningly beautiful.
"'But ears don't wiggle, Mapome.'
Her wiggling ears opened up a new world for him.
'Don't assume, James. Don't swallow anything because someone says so. Never behave as though the world is a small place. It isn't. Never be scared if someone is different or something is new. That's the whole point of creation. It would be very boring if all grass were green.'
'But all grass is green, Mapome.'
'Go outside now into the garden and bring me back grass in six colours.'
Go. Garden. Grass Green."

Secrets and lies are sometimes written in the face, the body, and known by everyone. Well written, and great insight.
"After the funeral, Gramps promises to pass by Archdeacon and Mrs. Miller to tell Phyllis the news. There is no point in not telling her. Information in small places is, like the wispy flowers of the silk cotton tree, lifted by air and dispersed on its numerous currents. Never mind no mouths admitting to tell tales, accounts find their way across yards, then miles. It is magic.
This does not mean secrets cannot be kept. If people are determined enough, they can band together to fervently guard history. Gramps met an American negro in the war who swore he was descended from Thomas Jefferson. He carried Jefferson's face, his body shape, and his name.
When Gramps asked if people knew, he replied, laughing. 'Plenty enough. But still, we be good at hiding what we choose.'"

I love words and here's a great one, meaning a flowering or blossoming.
"'Always, but not about this inflorescence.'"

Cultures share, and story is in the stars. Beautiful.
"Sometimes on a clear night he teaches her about the stars, telling her stories his Cherokee grandmother told him.
'Gramps showed me,' Grace recalls, 'the Little Dipper, Big Dipper, Southern Cross. And the Milky Way!' She identifies the powdery trail of stars.
'Bet you don't know who made the Milky Way?'
'Who?'
'Grandmother Spider. It's a web she spun and threw across the sky so she could steal the sun from the other side of the world and take it back to her side, where there was only darkness.'"

Stories and how they are everywhere. Oh yes.
"'I've a grandma who used to say, "Everything tell a story. You talk soft? That's a story. Talk loud? Another story. Your children smile? A story. Always cross? Another story. The man hold hands with his wife. One story. Never touch her. Another story."'
'So we have to get their story right, and ours, from the beginning?'
'Quite.'"

Lovely image as Grace returns home after so long.
"...The cosmos, purples, yellow, and mauve, wave welcome right and left, their green eyelas leaves making a low forest of shade to cool her dusty feet."

Grace does not do spirituality (and I don't, yet), so this is a good visual, and well written. Besides, worship is everywhere.
"...Now Sunday worship is the at the Church of the Robarts Library with evening prayers at the Chapel of the Laundry."

Gramps' advice on how Grace should cope with being in Toronto, so far away from home, and the cold Canadian winters.
Nor is it only the weather that you will find a challenge. It is also the draining away of colour; the death of everything around you, the absence of the sun. You will need to fight that in many ways. Here are my suggestions. Put a plant in your room or your dormitory — wherever you are living. Remember my story about stealing the piece of syngonium from Kew Gardens? Those few leaves kept me going through the gloomy winter months. I paid no mind to all those limey fellows laughing at me. When the bombs rained and the racist insults flew, I'd remember it and resolve that I too would thrive.
Next, put cheerful things on the walls of your room. Cut them from old calendars or magazines or those glossy advertisements that proliferate in the North. And buy clothes in cheery colours too, so that you brighten up the landscape. A red sweater or coat can do wonders for your spirits. And give yourself a treat, no matter how small, from time to time.

Here is Gramps' wisdom and value. We should all have a Gramps in our lives.
"She hugs Gramps tight. Whether she will see him again depend on so many things, she dare not take these last days for granted. More than all, he is the person who stand between her and yielding to the fear of not belonging. Having him beside her in Wentley or a long stone's throw away in Queenstown is one thing. But when they are oceans apart, will Gramps [sic] shielding magic still work?"

Gramps gives Grace a lot of wisdom, but Phyllis does too. Here is some, from one of her birthday letters. The best books makes you ask the questions the author poses, and so I ask: What is my reason?
"...I know you are growing into a fine person and I pray that you are happy. Today I'm asking God to give you three gifts. I'm asking him to make you glad to be the person you are. I'm also praying you will always be assured that many people love you: God loves you, everybody in the Carpenter family loves you, Granny Vads and Granny Daphne love you, and I love you. Thirdly, I pray you find the reason for your life. ..."

And then Grace's story (wee baby) begins)
"Like all children of decent parents in the village, Grace raise in the church. King James Version of the Holy Bible is the first book she ever see, the one book they read every day. Come evening, in their two-room barracks hut, they partake of whatever repast the Lord provide. After that, Ma, Pa, Gramps, and the lot of them listen to the Word, first as read by a grown up, next as reread by one of the children that is sufficiently book-learned to cipher it out. At just past five years of age, Grace can unscramble the longest words, measuring the ancient Hebrew names like shak-shak music on her tongue."

Thus a wonderful amazing book BEGINS, a Prelude, that informs the story, and begins our understanding of a very young mother, her sacrifice, her love, her growth, her contradictions, her imperfections (which all become apparent as the story moves forward).
"114 Riverside Drive
United States of America
18 July 1960
Dear baby
This is my firs letter only to say I miss you and speshally feedin you there was so much milk leave in my bres after they take you away doctor give me pills to dry it up. I cry to see it all runin out and I know it so good for you. I am here wit my rite mother Miss Daphne Miss Evadne daughter: Miss Evadne is your great Gran so you have plenty fambili here, my mother Miss Daphne she is reelly your Gran but it hard for me tink of her so for she look so young. I tink my mother is more Miss Evadne your great gran that mind me all my life up till now.
Hopen you are happy and God bless I will rite soon again.
Your lovin mother
Phyllis"

[Enid Wray · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has been on my "I want to read this list' every since I brought it into the Library when it first came out.
Sadly I did not finish this book.
I started reading it, indeed was enjoying it very much - Grace's story - when all of a sudden we get these other - jarring - narratives introduced. First some guy name Mark comes in for like two pages. Then it's a story about some priests - particularly Jimmy - in Africa... which did not draw me in at all and which lacked any connection - that I could see - to anything I'd read to that point. I was so deflated that I set it down, and did not pick it up again for a few days, by which time the moment had clearly passed and I just could not get myself back into it.
I would still like to know the rest of Grace's story but I guess it will remain a mystery to me - at least for now. Maybe someday I'll pick it back up again and give it another try but for now I have far too many other things I'm really excited about reading.

[Margarita · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 out of 5 stars
I picked up this debut novel by Pamela Mordecai because it was shortlisted for the 2015 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.  Mordecai does a remarkable job of interweaving a multitude of characters, themes and storyline complexities into her novel.  Stylistically, it also runs the risk at times of trying to do too much.  After steadily building up Grace’s childhood and relationship with her Gramps, the abrupt switch in story and introduction of new characters is initially awkward and frankly, unwelcome.  That said, the story settles down again.  Through Mordecai’s talent for character development and the strength of her writing, the various threads eventually come together to form what is overall, a very thoughtful and engaging story. 
 

[Darnez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book but was lost a decent amount of the time. I don't think a good job was done delineating the timeline. The characters are interesting and you wanna know what happens. Which, unfortunately you don't

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

We haven't yet finished the novel, but it never ceases to maintain the interest, never falters in its dual intention of raising important issues and teasing us with its romantic tangles. The latter are all the more poignant for their realism, involving families, generations. children, secrets, commitments and seemingly impossible obstacles separating the main characters from the one they truly love or even the truth. The important issues: Africa vs the West; HIV/AIDS; the role of the Catholic Church in helping the people of Africa (or otherwise); moral dilemmas; the significance of race, linking and separating Canada, Switzerland, a fictional Caribbean island, a fictional small West African country.

We've voyaged through 388 pages so far, only 61 left. We can't imagine how the loose ends will be tied up by the finish

[Jane Mulkewich · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met Pamela Mordecai at a recent literary event in Hamilton, and decided to read her book, understanding it to be (at least in part) about the mysterious origins of a young girl who is raised without knowing who her real parents are. This is a many-layered book, and it ends up being about so much more than that, with several subplots - it took me a while to read as I would put the book down to digest and to try to transition between very different storylines, which don't all come together until close to the end. A very ambitious book, which tells a very complicated story, perhaps too complicated. Pamela Mordecai created two fictional nations for this book: St. Chris, a small Caribbean Island, and Mabuli, a country in Sahelian Africa. In many ways, I would have preferred her writing about real places, and I am not sure why she had to invent fictional places, as some of the characters are from real places (Trinidad or Barbados for example). And I did not like the ending but I won't spoil it for you; I just wish she didn't end it that way.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I were to rate this book purely on writing ability, I would give it a 5, but as it stands I find formatting of the story very clunky and awkward. The story begins with Grace, a girl living on the Caribbean island of St. Cris. I immediately fell in love with her story and the prose. Then the story shifts to other characters in other countries. Here's where the clunkiness begins. Eventually the characters connect, but until then you are left jumping back and forth between unconnected stories. I've read many books where the author was able to do this quite seamlessly, but in this case it just didn't work for me. I held out until the end hoping that when the stories connected everything would fall into place and make sense, but I was left at the end of the book not entirely sure what happened.

[Nancy Whited · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn't really kick in until I was 3/4's of the way finished. Although the prose was detailed, there was a lack of connectedness for me. I felt the characters were half-finished except "Jimmy". It took a long time to finally put things together. There was an abundance of description, but it didn't weave a full picture for me. As for the ending; it just ended, without too much leading the reader to any possible conclusions. Unfortunately, I probably would not recommend this as a "good read" to anyone.

[Danielle West · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book for free through GoodReads First Reads program

It was a good book, but I had trouble really getting into it. I couldn't really figure out what the point of the story was, so I wasn't motivated to keep reading. Also the ending was weird.

[Amanda Connery · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was quite a difficult read. The way it was written (the wording) I found very difficult to follow. It also jumped around quite a bit with perspectives as well as time. Unfortunately I was unable to finish reading the book.

[Margaret Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous web of intriguing characters and sophisticated plot.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got to chapter 4 and stopped! Yuck!

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wish the book stayed on the island of St. Chris - was more real,interesting when it was a tale of a girl growing up there.

[Bill Brydon · Rating 5 out of 5]

“maybe she should take out a book and read, for it don’t make no sense to just lean against the shop front, doing nothing, and she start to search in her bag, when she hear Pansy shout, “Lord Jesus! Oh God, help me!” Pansy bawling for help louder and louder, so Grace get frighten. She drop her schoolbag, run quick into the shop, and push on the door to the back room with all her might. After a couple tries, it fly open. Staring at her are one pair of feet with brown socks, one pair of feet with no socks, four legs with no covering and Mortimer’s bare bottom rising and falling with a motion that remind her of when he was using the saw. Grace look, turn right around, march out, pick up her school bag, and start walking home. First she is furious with Pansy, but then she start to laugh. Mortimer have a nice body, but he is short. Pansy is a good-sized girl. Grace remember Gramps say, “Tiny insects pollinate sizeable flowers,”

[Ruth B]

DNF

I'm sorry I really tried to connect with the story or characters but I couldn't.

I will try to read it again in the future.