An immersive, wide-ranging tale of a Caribbean society over time.
Stewart excavates the history of a small, fictional Trinidadian community in this collection of linked short stories.
The village of Kungo Pass is set in the Moruga Hills of southeast Trinidad. It was founded not long after Emancipation by a group known to history as the Candelas—the descendants of African enslaved people—who have made their livings through such industry as sugar planting and oil extraction. Claud Atwell was born there in 1945; like his brothers, he escapes working in the cane fields by getting an education. His early dabbling in revolutionary activism forces him to flee to the United States for the better part of a decade. When he comes back, he finds work as a journalist: “I write columns for a weekly newspaper out of Port of Spain going on five years now,” he claims, “and as long as I keep my nose clean, I’ll be OK.” When local leaders from the Homeground Restoration Committee decide to prepare a grant proposal to secure funds for preserving the historic community of Kungo Pass, Claud is selected to go out and find stories that make up its history. There turn out to be quite a few, such as the time in 1935 when men gathered to drink at a local shop and spontaneously formed a brigade with the aim of helping to liberate Abyssinia from the Italians. Another story concerns Lutchmin, a young woman who works in the cane fields and dreams of a better life, including possible marriage to her boyfriend Lloydie—at least until a competitive fight changes her view of things. In another story, two old “stickfighter” martial artists reminisce over the way their sport—and their community—has changed around them.
Spanning the 1930s through the ’90s, the stories Claud collects capture the grit and ingenuity of his little corner of Trinidad, a place where violence, pride, and tradition roil beneath the surface of every tale. From the beginning, Claud knowingly identifies himself and his fellow characters as “ethnographic fiction composed of elements garnered among multiple individuals” who belong to “a fictional African-Creole community.” Somehow, though, Stewart’s metafictional introduction doesn’t hinder the book’s verisimilitude. Stewart is a skilled prose stylist, and he expertly describes his setting, its people, and their worldview. Here, for instance, he writes about the numerous African deities who haunt the landscape, despite having been banned by the colonial government: “They appeared in the pond and river, the gnarled branches of old silk cotton trees, in copses, thickets, roadside rocks, and pools of standing water. Their voices could be heard at night whispering, calling, roaring through the trees at times.” The individual stories are finely realized, even if the frame narrative that contains them feels slightly unnecessary; too much time is spent on the origins of the Homeground Restoration Committee and the various politics that bring it about. Even so, the richness of Kungo Pass and its people more than make up for this narrative throat-clearing.
An immersive, wide-ranging tale of a Caribbean society over time.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9780982806418
Page Count: 240
Publisher: JOSM Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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