Harare Review of Books

288 pages.

Expected publication date: Mar. 28, 2023 (Catapult)

Fiction.

I don’t know why I’ve read so many ghost stories lately, but this turned out to be another. It’s also a moving book about mothers and daughters across generations, a second theme running through many books I’ve reviewed lately. 

There are threads of magical realism woven through the novel, with the trickster god Anansi, and a fascinating Trinidadian cosmology. The use of myth and ghosts to explore women’s power and agency, and also death and how we endure in memory, is outstanding. The depiction of the sisterhood of Zora and Ashes, the young American-Jamaican-Trinidadians around whom the story revolves, is absolutely beautiful, and is the centre that holds the book together. They are truly ride-or-die, always loyal, loving and supporting each other through catastrophe, and even when their lives and personalities diverge. 

There are so many mysteries in this book (—like, what really happened to the sisters’ uncle??). I gave up on trying to unravel them, because there are parts of the story that are told by a less-than-reliable narrator, tricking you into thinking you know what happened, and then turning around and telling a completely different story. This is so consistent with oral tradition that it charmed my socks off: I could have been listening to one of my Gogo’s stories.

A wonderful debut novel, but not an easy read, the book deals with a lot: loss, pain, death, the break-up of families, rape, traumatised people visiting their trauma on others, cancer and caring for an ill parent, sibling death, mental illness, and the struggles around queer identity. And that list of woes isn’t even complete. But the magic of this book is in story, both in plot and in the exploration of the art of storytelling, from oral tradition and myth-making, to the stories we make as families and in search of personal meaning. I think this book will haunt me for a while.

Thank you to Catapult for this DRC!

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