The True History of Paradise
by Margaret Cezair-Thompson | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0755347048 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0755347048 Global Overview for this book
Registered by LindyLouMac of Tywyn, Wales United Kingdom on 10/31/2010
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
Amazon.co.uk Review
Margaret Cezair-Thompson's The True History of Paradise opens in 1981 and Jean Landing is about to flee her disintegrating homeland, Jamaica, but first she must bury her sister. Lana, a pop singer in the early days of reggae, has immolated herself in a moment of madness and must be buried immediately, "because", as someone explains to Jean, "burned bodies decompose quickly". The funeral takes place in the morning; that afternoon, Jean is on her way across the mountains to a rendezvous with a private plane that will take her to the US. Accompanied by her childhood friend, Paul, she drives across her island nation, noting the increasingly violent confrontations between political factions even as she retreats into memories of her own fractured past:
Ghosts stand on the foothills of this journey ... They speak to her, Jean Landing, born in that audient hour before daylight broke on the nation, born into the knowledge of nation and pre-nation, the old noises of barracks, slave quarters, and steerage mingling in her ears with the newest sounds of self-rule. On verandas, in kitchens, in the old talk, in her waking reveries and anxious dreams, she has heard their stories.
From her own mother, the light-skinned, "selfish and adamant" Monica, sister Lana, and deceased father, the black nationalist Roy Landing, to her white ancestor Rebecca Crawford, they are all here, sometimes in Jean's memory, other times telling their stories in their own voices. It's a complicated weave of story lines and voices, but Margaret Cezair-Thompson carries it off with aplomb. The True History of Paradise explores both the political and the personal as Jean's childhood remembrances play out against the war-torn landscape of Jamaica. Near the end of the novel Jean reflects, "To leave one's country. It is not a complete sentence, a complete anything. Its infinitive possibilities leap from loss to promise and back again from promise to loss." This promising first novel makes those leaps without a stumble.
Margaret Cezair-Thompson's The True History of Paradise opens in 1981 and Jean Landing is about to flee her disintegrating homeland, Jamaica, but first she must bury her sister. Lana, a pop singer in the early days of reggae, has immolated herself in a moment of madness and must be buried immediately, "because", as someone explains to Jean, "burned bodies decompose quickly". The funeral takes place in the morning; that afternoon, Jean is on her way across the mountains to a rendezvous with a private plane that will take her to the US. Accompanied by her childhood friend, Paul, she drives across her island nation, noting the increasingly violent confrontations between political factions even as she retreats into memories of her own fractured past:
Ghosts stand on the foothills of this journey ... They speak to her, Jean Landing, born in that audient hour before daylight broke on the nation, born into the knowledge of nation and pre-nation, the old noises of barracks, slave quarters, and steerage mingling in her ears with the newest sounds of self-rule. On verandas, in kitchens, in the old talk, in her waking reveries and anxious dreams, she has heard their stories.
From her own mother, the light-skinned, "selfish and adamant" Monica, sister Lana, and deceased father, the black nationalist Roy Landing, to her white ancestor Rebecca Crawford, they are all here, sometimes in Jean's memory, other times telling their stories in their own voices. It's a complicated weave of story lines and voices, but Margaret Cezair-Thompson carries it off with aplomb. The True History of Paradise explores both the political and the personal as Jean's childhood remembrances play out against the war-torn landscape of Jamaica. Near the end of the novel Jean reflects, "To leave one's country. It is not a complete sentence, a complete anything. Its infinitive possibilities leap from loss to promise and back again from promise to loss." This promising first novel makes those leaps without a stumble.
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I'm so glad it has found a home with you. I hope you enjoy reading it and that you might take a few moments to jot down here what you thought about the book, or about finding it, or about bookcrossing.
You don't have to join or sign up or anything to bookcrossing to leave a comment here but if you do join, you will receive emails to alert you when others make a journal entry for this book and track its travels across the world. If you decide to join bookcrossing, now that you have discovered the site, I'd be delighted if you would mention me - LindyLouMac - as the person who introduced you to the site.
Happy reading
LindyLouMac
