Reviews with content warning for Incest - How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

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How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

56 reviews

deen734's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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kate_can's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The title refers to a cautionary tale parents tell their daughters not to be willful, as the child in the narrative loses an arm due to curiosity when she enters a tunnel despite dire warnings. The message misfires when Lala (she who is told the tale by her grandmother, Wilma) wonders whether the girl could cope without the limb, swapped for following passion. She is cautioned, ‘but how will she sweep the house with only one arm’? She questions whether a woman’s worth is judged by her housekeeping, and maybe she would rather lead an adventurous life.

Unfortunately, her adventures do not lead to happiness. The novel is set in Barbados on a beach straight from the brochures of paradise. White folk live in tall, gated houses, while violence, prostitution, drug smuggling, murder and other criminal activities exist beyond their gardens, and everyone carries a gun. The police turn a blind eye to the abuse (particularly of women) until it enters those houses of those who go to embassies and ruin the tourist trade.

The community is steeped in intergenerational violence and abuse. Mothers beat their children because they do not want them to go bad and need to whip the devil out of them; they fear that sparing the rod is the cause of the child’s failings. Lala marries Adan, who regularly beats and rapes her, even while she is recovering from a traumatic birth. He commits robberies to pay for his lifestyle, which escalate to drug smuggling and murder in a sort of subplot to the novel. His cruelty leads to a tug of war with their newborn (known only as Baby because they have not yet decided on a name), which results in the death of the child as she is dropped on the floor.

Girls are routinely raped by their male relatives: Lala is the child of her mother, Esme, and her grandfather, Carter. The young women are sent away to remove the temptation, while the man is not considered to be at fault. Lala is made to sleep in the outhouse to avoid her grandfather’s attentions, or how else can he resist? Women are pursued by men. The policeman who investigates the Baby’s death pursues Sheba and refuses to accept that she doesn’t want his protection; Adan fixates on his ‘outside woman’ despite being married to Lala.

A grown man cannot help himself, she explains, in the presence of a young Wilkinson girl. This is the way it has been for generations. It is not the man’s fault, says Wilma, there is nothing he can do about it. It was this way with her mother before her, her daughter and granddaughter after her. It was this way with her.

In some ways, the novel, full of descriptive scenes and local patois, is reminiscent of those by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison or Alan Duff. Characters struggle to connect with community and lash out at those who seek to reinforce their culture without understanding the roots of reggae or Rasta, merely turning gangsta. When Wilma holds a funeral for Baby, Adan does not attend because he is wary of her connection to culture, although he tells his friends that she is a bitch and “he not going anywhere around her or her house.” He is alone and left behind in the world where he has lost his local bonds.

Even Lala is infused in her beliefs, although they may not support her – her grief, trauma and post-partum depression are explained in superstition. “She is convinced also that supernatural beings are conspiring on her daughter’s behalf to make her understand that she will pay for her part in her death.” She fears a “wicked duppy” is playing tricks on her, putting cans of formula in the cupboard, although she knows she has thrown them all out, sprinkling the scent of baby powder in the house, and “It is this duppy, or another, equally malevolent, who infuses the peculiar sound the paper bag of flour makes when she is making dumplings and it hits the floor with the same sound she heard when Baby was dropped.”

Reviewers have called the book unflinching, claustrophobic, pitiless, and relentless. Focussing on murder, abuse, a violent marriage and the death of a baby, it is certainly no light-hearted tale, but there is a slight glimmer of hope towards the end, and it is ultimately compelling. It is exquisitely constructed, with flashbacks to flesh out the characters and the pathways that have led them to this Barbadian beach, and it is a great achievement for a debut novel.

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rebel_elleiance_reads's review against another edition

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This is a five star DNF. The narrator is my favorite ever. She understood the assignment and brings to life the characters and setting like no one I’ve listened to. The beauty of the writing gets buried in the darkness of the material. The prose are gorgeous but the storyline is despair piled on unrelenting tragedy of generational trauma and violence. It is almost hyper-realistic horror. I just got to the point where I couldn’t be in that dark place anymore listening to the emotional and physical torture of nearly all the characters without getting dragged to a dark place myself.

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abbie_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.25

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House is a novel about the violence inflicted on women by the men in their lives. You know going in that it’s going to be a tough read, but boy does Jones throw everything she’s got at you. The sheer, unending misery of the lives of these women was what made me struggle through it, but at the same time what makes it an important read. Jones states in her afterword that she wrote it to highlight the situation lots of women in Barbados find themselves in, trapped in cycles of violence, unable to see another option for themselves but to stay by the side of their abuser. The story is so driven by acts of violence (literally every bad thing you could think of that could happen to a woman) that I trudged through it, wary of whatever horror lay in the next chapter.
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I did love the way the story stripped back the layers of Barbados - to white western tourists, the name evokes a tropical paradise, but Jones depicts the everyday lives and cruelties of the folks who live there. If you enjoyed that aspect of Eve Out of Her Ruins (I prefer that one to this), then you might appreciate this one too!
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A tough read that I’m glad I read for its exposé of violence against women in Barbados, but it will leave you exhausted.

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