Celia lives with her Aunt Tassi in Black Rock in Tobago. She grows up knowing very little about her parents. Her mother, she is told, died giving birth to her and her father, lives in England and he has never visited her. At the beginning of the novel Celia has two aims: to visit her Father in England and to make something of her life. Her school teacher, Miss McCartney, tells her: ‘You can be anything you want to be. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.’ Here enters someone who does tell her different – Roman Bartholomew who is her Aunt Tassi’s second husband. Roman rapes Celia and this causes her to flee from the Black Rock with the intent to visit her Aunt Sula. Whilst on her travels she meets William who takes an instant liking to her. Celia accepts his offer of temporary shelter at a house that he shares with his mother and brother, Solomon. Try as he does, William doesn’t get any where romantically with Celia. Instead, after agreeing to work as a maid at a local family’s house, she falls involve with the head of the family, Dr Emmanuel Rodriguez. From this point onwards the narrative gets really interesting. What is going to become of this relationship and how is this going to affect Celia are two questions at the front of the reader’s mind. Something that I began to consider two-thirds of the way through the novel is just how much of Celia’s troubles would have been avoided if she had grown up with loving parents? And then – and this was the best part for me – there are certain revelations which turn everything that I was thinking on its head. These were completely unexpected by me and, of course, so much more appreciated.
The inside cover of the novel describes Smyth’s writing as having a ‘vivid sense of the supernatural’. I have to say when I began the novel I didn’t expect this to interest me especially. Throughout the novel, it is through supernatural references that Smyth warns us that something bad is going to happen in Celia’s life. Here’s an example during a period when Celia is living with her Aunt who is seriously ill:
Later, a small brown bird flew into the house. It perched for a moment on the gramophone, then it flew to the window and settled on the ledge. It had yellow
eyes. It seemed to look right at me; and it wasn’t at all afraid. I wondered if it was a sign that my aunt would soon die.
I’m not sure I really cared for these supernatural references which just seemed to be added at particularly bleak occasions in Celia’s life without good reason. However, looking back on the novel now, these sorts of references seem more worthwhile when considering all the different places that Celia goes and the events that unfold there. In fact, it’s a way of remembering the place where Celia came from, Black Rock and the things she learnt there whilst with her Aunt Tassi. This is evident towards the end of the novel – when Celia is more mature – and she avoids eating a bowl of soup prepared by someone who doesn’t care for her that much:
Mrs Shamiel served corn soup for dinner. There were dumplings in between bits of meat and bone in the yellow liquid. I didn’t want to eat it, there was something about the soup that tasted odd. I remembered Aunt Tassi telling me how some people put human bones in their soups to make unwanted guests very sick.
In short, I thoroughly recommend this novel which remarkably is from a debut novelist. It does reward close reading and the plot does come together very nicely at the end. If you are a reader who is attracted by a writer’s ability to set a scene thoughtfully and tell a story beautifully, then this novel belongs on your To Be Read list.
No comments:
Post a Comment