Oonya KempadooReseñas

Sassy, tart, frightening. Superbly written. I heard the voices, felt the heat, ached from the tragedy born out of the struggles of poverty, race, faith....all those same old stories, played out starkly in one fleeting time.

A fairly evocative look back to the author's childhood in Guyana. The writing is poetic, descriptive, as she recalls the place, the people and the political climate for a girl on the brink of adulthood. And watching over all the events stands the Buxton Spice mango tree in the garden.Not massively memorable but quite well written.

I picked this up after going through lists of authors for the Caribbean theme in Reading Globally for the first quarter of this year. This had the benefit of being available at my library. After publishing her first two novels relatively close together (1998 and 2001) there was a twelve year gap between the second and this, her third novel. Kempadoo was born in England to Guyanese parents and brought up in Guyana from the age of five onward. While Guyana is part of the South American continent it is considered part of the Caribbean both linguistically and culturally, and is part of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

The book centers around a Ata, an artist who has returned to Trinidad to live (she is not from Trinidad but has considers 'Caribbean' to be her nationality). She has worked with Carnival costume designers and is now starting an office job. The book focuses most on her, I'd say, but the always-third-person narration floats around between her and her group of friends representing a wide variety of people, backgrounds, classes and views. The book takes place mostly just before, during, and after Carnival. Some reviewers have said it felt like she tried to cram every aspect of Trinidad into a relatively short book, but I felt like that worked because of being set around Carnival.

As the focus of the narration changes so does the language, going from no Creole slang/dialect to using a fair bit (most of it totally understandable to the outsider). Having the mix change really works, though had me wishing over and over there were an audio edition (it would be an excellent audiobook, with a good reader, of course). I'm really curious about the simultaneous usage of youall and allyou and why one is chosen over another at any given time since externally they mean the same thing (for the corollaries in my part of Appalachia and the upper Ohio River valley I'd be tempted to say that 'allyou' is more personal and 'youall' more general).

The biggest plot part of the book is one of Ata's group, an architect and gay man, Fraser, having a serious medical collapse which turns out to be due to AIDS, which has already seriously damaged his kidneys. The rush to help him, but also judgement of his choices and difficult decisions, is a key part of the book, with Ata seemingly taking on more of his care than anyone else. His sickness sets some cracks running through their group.

It is a busy book, a full book, and a swift book. Towards the end there are some things that I don't really get, one of which seemed totally unnecessary and goes unresolved, but otherwise I think it's a pretty solid novel with beautiful writing. The hills are almost a character themselves, which, being a West Virginia girl, I appreciated and related to. The top four or five reviews on Goodreads give you a good sense of it, and what potential problems are, I think.½

Kempadoo is a true poet, and although BUXTON SPICE is billed as a novel, it is really more a collection of dances in which the poetics of language play a great part. With more and more literature appearing that does not follow the tight storylines of old, perhaps it is time for us to come up with another word to describe books such as Kempadoo's that are not-quite-novel, not-quite poetry, and not-quite-short-stories. Never mind that we don't have an official category for Kempadoo's fiction. It is strong enough and musical enough to dance on its own power. A series of short collage pieces show us a series of small moments that become suddenly huge in the life of a girl child in Guyana in the 70s. It is about early and uncomfortable awareness of race, sex, age, disability, and of the unpredictibility of politics. Kempadoo writes beautifully and naturally of sex. This is a strong point of hers, and it serves her well. The sex actually creates a sort of tension on which all of her stories ride. Oonya Kempadoo is young and she's talented. What she has done in BUXTON SPICE with language can most certainly be done again with a different theme. One can only wonder what Kempadoo will write about next. Will it be Guyana or England or . . .something entirely from her imagination? This is an author to watch. And, in the meantime, to read.

Cliff and Ossi have grown up in Plymouth on the island of Tobago, surrounded by urban poverty and drug abuse. One day they are invited to the "flim-style house" of Bella and Peter, a wealthy vacationing couple who offer temporary harbor from the harshness of the city streets. At first, the friendship appears an unlikely but uncomplicated connection between human beings, but when Cliff, Peter and Bella embark on a menage-a-trois relationship, difficulties arise.

I wanted to love this book. From the opening description of the sea, written in a perfect Caribbean dialect, I felt immersed into the lush blue-and-green world of Tobago. Cliff's first person narration, though challenging to read, created a unique, believable and wonderfully observant character. I loved his dialect so much that I sometimes read it out loud to myself. But about halfway through the novel, it became obvious that this book wasn't on a clear course. The point of view switches over to Bella, a two-dimensional character whose thoughts and dialect are not as rich as Cliff's. Italicized stream-of-consciousness ramblings are difficult to understand and serve no purpose in the story. The author doesn't seem to know what to do with the complex relationship she's created or the questions it raises, so the book suddenly jolts to a stop with a surprise ending that doesn't play fair with the earlier characterization of Cliff. The book left me feeling cheated at the end, and I doubt that I will read more of this author's work.½

Story about a poor family in Tobago that gets connected to a wealthy British family. Great for whowing first world-third world differences, but plot hard to follow at times and made difficult by strong dialect.

An interesting coming-of-age novel set in Guyana in the 1970s. I'm not sure I warmed up entirely to any of the characters and I'm not sure this works as a bildungsroman - 'm not sure the protagonist makes it to adulthood in the book. But despite my disconnection and my technical beefs, the story was interesting as a vivid portrait of the very intense place that Guyana was during that era.