Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn
My rating: 3/5 cats
“Can’t wait to leave dis godforsaken place.”
“Is it dat bad? We live by di sea. How much people can say dat? Give t’anks.”
“Maxi, shut up wid yuh blessings nonsense. This is no paradise. At least, not for us.”
so, i wasn’t over the moon about this one, and i’m not sure why. sure, it is absolutely, unremittingly bleak, but that’s never bothered me in a book. this is thomas hardy in jamaica; characters caught up in vicious cycles – suffering from the aftereffects of bad choices made because of narrow options and causing suffering in others as they struggle to stay afloat, thereby narrowing their options and on and on in this interconnected web of exploitation, abuse, ambition, violence, poverty, and a deep self-loathing that causes characters to feel shame for their most elemental traits – skin color, sexuality, gender.
this is the book in a nutshell:
”’Membah dis, nobody love a black girl. Not even harself. Now get up an’ guh get yuh pay.”
i was impressed with so much of this – there were some really delicate mechanisms at work in the plot’s undercarriage, building the impenetrable wall of cause-and-effect/coincidence/irony which – again – is the very thing i love so much in thomas hardy.
but i’m also frustrated by hardy’s characters – their decisions, their motivations, and i felt the same thing here: characters who jeopardize their own happiness, who betray loved ones, who bait their own traps. i appreciate these moves as necessary for driving a tragic narrative, but there were just too many specific instances here where the motivation wasn’t clear apart from the author wanting to achieve the end result. i don’t understand the relationship between thandi and charles, which goes from zero to maximum intensity in no time, and there are other more spoilery things where a very intelligent and strategically-minded character with an eye on the long game will make decisions whose consequences go against self-interest & etc.
maybe i read this at a bad time – exhaustion and pain and assorted life-garbage have been cluttering my brain, so i probably glossed over some of the subtleties in my scatter. she’s an excellent writer, and there were painfully good images, turns of phrase, revelations. there was just some absence i can’t quite articulate, which seems douchey of me to even say. but i’m feeling a very high three for this one, and as a debut, it shows she’s got incredible potential, and i promise to read all future books by her with the proper amount of rest beforehand.
