Immersive, persuasive: an elemental “portal to the Caribbean” delivered in a distinctive voice.
A vibrant portrait of Trinidad in the 1940s traces various members of a multiracial community grappling with poverty, emotional connection, and “hereditary pain.”
Starting with the disappearance of secretive landowner Dalton Changoor, the blood-brother swearing of four local lads, and a drowned dog, Hosein—a celebrated author from Trinidad and Tobago—plunges readers into the turbulent stream of Bell Village life on a not-always-paradisiacal-seeming Caribbean island. His cast of characters is wide, forefronted by Hansraj “Hans” Saroop, one of Changoor’s laborers, and his family—wife Shweta, son Krishna. Their home, on an old sugar cane estate, is the barrack, a rat-infested, leaking, multifamily dwelling with a shared latrine, in contrast with the large Changoor home, a manor now occupied solely by the landowner’s wife, Marlee, left in the dark about her husband’s whereabouts or return plans. Faced with ransom notes and a second dog’s death, Marlee pays Hans to be her night watchman, arousing suspicions in both Shweta and Krishna. Meanwhile, secondary characters—other barrack dwellers, bullying teenagers, unreliable policemen, and more—impact events and shade in the “anecdotal tapestry.” Destructive histories, not just the colonial past, but also the American occupation during World War II, impinge on the present, as do racism and complex, often violent connections. There are gods—Hans and his family are Hindu; his colleague Robinson is Christian; Rookmin, the wise woman of the barrack, adheres to the old beliefs—and devils who beat their wives and worse. Sex, betrayal, feuds, nightmare pregnancies, and more dead dogs swirl through the narrative, underpinned by philosophies of survival among all classes. Hosein evokes all this in rich, visceral language dotted with obscure terms: flabellate, noctilucae, rufescent. His story, often brutal, ultimately tragic, is nevertheless lit by a wide embrace reaching beyond place and people to the bedrock.
Immersive, persuasive: an elemental “portal to the Caribbean” delivered in a distinctive voice.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-321338-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.
A lifetime of friendship endures many upheavals.
Ellie and Homa, two young girls growing up in Tehran, meet at school in the early 1950s. Though their families are very different, they become close friends. After the death of Ellie’s father, she and her difficult mother must adapt to their reduced circumstances. Homa’s more warm and loving family lives a more financially constrained life, and her father, a communist, is politically active—to his own detriment and that of his family’s welfare. When Ellie’s mother remarries and she and Ellie relocate to a more exclusive part of the city, the girls become separated. They reunite years later when Homa is admitted to Ellie’s elite high school. Now a political firebrand with aspirations to become a judge and improve the rights of women in her factionalized homeland, Homa works toward scholastic success and begins practicing political activism. Ellie follows a course, plotted originally by her mother, toward marriage. The tortuous path of the girls’ adult friendship over the following decades is played out against regime change, political persecution, and devastating loss. Ellie’s well-intentioned but naïve approach stands in stark contrast to Homa’s commitment to human rights, particularly for women, and her willingness to risk personal safety to secure those rights. As narrated by Ellie, the girls’ story incorporates frequent references to Iranian food, customs, and beliefs common in the years of tumult and reforms accompanying the Iranian Revolution. Themes of jealousy—even in close friendships—and the role of the shir zan, the courageous “lion women” of Iran who effect change, recur through the narrative. The heartaches associated with emigration are explored along with issues of personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good (no matter how remote it may seem).
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781668036587
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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