WHERE DOGS BARK WITH THEIR TAILS

Three siblings are buffeted by family drama, culture, and history in Guadeloupe.

Bulle’s debut novel is framed around a young woman seeking to understand the lives of her father, known to his family as Petit-Frère, and her aunts, Lucinde and Antoine. Some of the disruption is a function of colonization: France’s possession of the Antillean archipelago is at once a source of social identity (Antoine long aspired to own a shop in Paris) and division, leading to a violent clash between police and citizens in 1967. There are cultural challenges too, as the siblings are mixed-race, complicating their status in a closed and class-conscious society. And then there is simple family drama—in alternating narratives, the siblings debate the causes of various incidents in Rashomon-like fashion. (Antoine’s urge to leave her impoverished home at 16 was either rash or necessary, depending on who’s talking.) Antoine calls the place “this little island where immorality reigns,” and the novel’s title refers to the backwardness of the family’s hometown. Still, Bulle conveys a deep sense of affection for the place in all its frustrations; translator Grawemeyer includes thoughtful, unobtrusive footnotes about Guadeloupean history and folklore while preserving much of the flavor of the original French and Creole in the text itself. So the novel’s flaws are largely matters of structure: Splitting the voices across the three siblings and Petit-Frère’s daughter diffuses the narrative, which at its heart is about Antoine’s struggles. But Antoine's thread feels clipped; there's a truncated subplot involving diamond smuggling and moments of magical realism that pass without much development, while Lucinde’s stints as a clothing designer or Petit-Frère’s as a jazz-loving soldier get shorter shrift. As a portrait of a nation that’s received little attention, it’s fascinating, but as a story it struggles to find its footing.

A universal story about sibling tensions infused with plenty of history.