The thing is, I got lost in the Guyanese English. This is a variety of English that I am not familiar with, so the different case markers (e.g. there seems to be no distinction between nominative and accusative pronouns) threw me off. Add to that the peculiar spellings that were intended to mirror Guyanese English pronounciation and contraction. So reading the text was definitely challenging, to the point that sometimes I failed to notice that something serious was happening in the narrative, like rape.
Ok, let's talk about sex. Assuming you detect it, and get past the slang, then the sex is graphic. You have lecherous uncles showing off their junk to young girls, forced sexual encounters, voyeurism, and many other things. I mean, life in a quiet rural coastal village ain't that innocent it seems. Yes, plenty of things are happening here, but at the end, I must say I fail to see where this is going.
The thing is, it felt like this novel was about everything and nothing at the same time. There's definitely some action going on in the narrative front, but it is very unclear and incoherent. It is more or less a collection of rambling vignettes, and it feels like every chapter is a stand-alone chapter, and that it doesn't actually matter whether you read the book from start to finish or you just randomly pick a chapter and start reading from there. It is overall very blurry, and I as a reader had difficulty grasping what actually was going on. No matter how steamy the sex might have been, it was covered in a very thick narrative haze that I couldn't get through.
So yeah, I have mixed feelings about this book. If you want to read a piece of Caribbean literature, then this might be an interesting option, but I have to say it left a lukewarm aftertaste. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.
See my other book reviews here.
