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THE TANGERINE TREE by Regina Hanson

THE TANGERINE TREE

By

Pub Date: Aug. 21st, 1995
Publisher: Clarion

Hanson's entire book--her first--consists of a masterful departure scene, shorter than a short story but lyrical in the extreme and resonating with broader overtones. Ida is crushed because her father is leaving Jamaica to find work in New York City; he asks her to tend to the tangerine tree in his absence by praying to ""Mistress Sun"" and gives her a book of Greek myths--""by de [sic] time you are big enough to read it by yourself, I will be home."" These and all of the story's details have been carefully weighed and flow effortlessly into metaphor; from the emotions of a little girl, Hanson cuts a small jewel of a book. Borrowing from the palette of Gaugin, Stevenson has created fuzzy, colorful acrylic paintings. He depicts characters in awkward, evocative postures (squatting, hugging), whose expressiveness springs not so much from their faces (which are blurred) as from the positions of their arms and legs. Tropical colors contrast perfectly with the somber tone of the tale and its undercurrent of hopefulness.