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harris39's review against another edition
3.0
I'm chagrined to admit that this is the first book I've read by a Trinidadian author and, moreover, set in Trinidad. On the whole, I enjoyed this book as I found it a fairly quick and easy read, and I did appreciate the insight that I gained into contemporary Caribbean culture. Increasingly I find myself enjoying books that place me somewhere utterly foreign to myself and I liked learning some bits and pieces of Trinidadian history as well as the post-Colonial battles/issues the locals still face. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition to consider that in these "idyllic" former British colonies, they have already had their land stolen by foreigners (at least) once previously, and now the same issue continues to plague locals—albeit this time with the encouragement and/or tacit approval of their government—as desirable bits of land are snatched up and made inaccessible by resorts and rich foreigners. I hadn't considered this parallel before and thought it an interesting line of thought to explore.
As for the main story, that of the Ducksworth family, I thought it was fine, though I did find it rather simplistic and many parts of it obvious, even without considering the obvious homages to Shakespeare's King Lear. I was disappointed that the characters didn't feel very well or deeply developed; indeed, many of them (particularly Glynis & Douglas) felt rather cartoonish in their villainy. I personally didn't find the underlying motivations or the overarching plot very complex, and the whole novel—even the sociopolitical aspects—just felt rather simplistic and superficial in its approach. I kept hoping there would be more meat for Nunez to sink her teeth into, but this reading experience really felt like I was a stone skipping along the surface of a pond, never to know any real depth. That's not to say the story wasn't engaging or absorbing (it was!) only that I wish it all had more heft to it rather than coming across as a rather obvious cautionary tale.
I also REALLY did not like all the mentions within the book of how a given relationship or situation in EVEN IN PARADISE paralleled the original material in KING LEAR. I think most people reading this book would be smart enough to pick up on the similarities/allusions (and, if you aren't, pointing out how something in EIP mirrored KL probably wouldn't mean much to you, regardless), and I thought it was so inelegant and awkward for Nunez to "show her work" as it was. We get that you used KING LEAR as the inspiration for this novel, that you might even consider it a modern-day retelling of KING LEAR in a Caribbean setting... no need to explicitly remind us within the text itself! Let the story and themes you develop speak for themselves!
Overall, a fine book, but nothing spectacular. I do want to read learn more about this part of the world and intend to read more Caribbean authors. Perhaps I was expecting too much from Nunez but I was ever-so-slightly disappointed that this book felt so slight. That said, I would read more by her in the future, though I think I will make it a priority to try other Caribbean authors first.
As for the main story, that of the Ducksworth family, I thought it was fine, though I did find it rather simplistic and many parts of it obvious, even without considering the obvious homages to Shakespeare's King Lear. I was disappointed that the characters didn't feel very well or deeply developed; indeed, many of them (particularly Glynis & Douglas) felt rather cartoonish in their villainy. I personally didn't find the underlying motivations or the overarching plot very complex, and the whole novel—even the sociopolitical aspects—just felt rather simplistic and superficial in its approach. I kept hoping there would be more meat for Nunez to sink her teeth into, but this reading experience really felt like I was a stone skipping along the surface of a pond, never to know any real depth. That's not to say the story wasn't engaging or absorbing (it was!) only that I wish it all had more heft to it rather than coming across as a rather obvious cautionary tale.
I also REALLY did not like all the mentions within the book of how a given relationship or situation in EVEN IN PARADISE paralleled the original material in KING LEAR. I think most people reading this book would be smart enough to pick up on the similarities/allusions (and, if you aren't, pointing out how something in EIP mirrored KL probably wouldn't mean much to you, regardless), and I thought it was so inelegant and awkward for Nunez to "show her work" as it was. We get that you used KING LEAR as the inspiration for this novel, that you might even consider it a modern-day retelling of KING LEAR in a Caribbean setting... no need to explicitly remind us within the text itself! Let the story and themes you develop speak for themselves!
Overall, a fine book, but nothing spectacular. I do want to read learn more about this part of the world and intend to read more Caribbean authors. Perhaps I was expecting too much from Nunez but I was ever-so-slightly disappointed that this book felt so slight. That said, I would read more by her in the future, though I think I will make it a priority to try other Caribbean authors first.
kjade13's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
collegecate's review against another edition
4.0
Read for Read Harder 2018: book of colonial or post colonial literature. I thought this category was going to be a downer, but this was really interesting. I liked the original story, the King Lear connection, and I learned a lot about the people if the Caribbean.
scorpstar77's review against another edition
3.0
Émile first meets Corinne and her father in Trinidad when he's a teenager and Corinne is a child, but he's impressed with her even then. He likes her father, Peter Ducksworth, but even as a teenager he recognizes the man's flaws. He notes that, though Ducksworth is a native Trinidadian and seems not to have a hint of racism about him, he's still a wealthy white man and Émile feels weird about hearing him using traditional Trini turns of phrase. Ducksworth is about to move his family to Barbados because of their amazing beaches, and Émile heads off to Jamaica for college, where he becomes best friends with another Trinidadian with Lebanese roots. His friend, Albert, becomes besotted with a white woman named Glynis...who turns out to be Corinne's older sister, another of the Ducksworth girls, and Émile does not have the same warm feelings toward her that he does toward Corinne. But after a whirlwind romance, Albert and Glynis determine to marry, and Albert asks Émile to accompany them to Barbados to introduce the idea to Ducksworth. Wanting to make his friend happy, and also curious about seeing Corinne again, Émile agrees, thus unwittingly embedding himself in a hotbed of familial jealousy that reminds him strongly of King Lear. Glynis and the third sister, Rebecca (recently eloped with a man who is very rude to Albert because of his Lebanese heritage), seem to be conspiring to drive a wedge between their father and Corinne (who they believe receives far more of their father's love than they). Meanwhile, Émile and Corinne are slowly falling in love.
Émile's comparison of the situation to Lear is no accident - the author compares the two stories often, and the three sisters even have the same first initials as the sisters in King Lear. It's not quite as tragic a tale as Lear, but it's not a happy story, either. It does, at least, have a happy ending for the hero and heroine of the tale. It is a pretty captivating family drama - I was sucked in from early on - but the comparisons to King Lear were heavy-handed. I always like getting an inside look at different cultures from my own - in this case, a little bit of 3 different Caribbean islands, each of which has its own character. A good story, a solid story, if not a literary masterpiece.
Émile's comparison of the situation to Lear is no accident - the author compares the two stories often, and the three sisters even have the same first initials as the sisters in King Lear. It's not quite as tragic a tale as Lear, but it's not a happy story, either. It does, at least, have a happy ending for the hero and heroine of the tale. It is a pretty captivating family drama - I was sucked in from early on - but the comparisons to King Lear were heavy-handed. I always like getting an inside look at different cultures from my own - in this case, a little bit of 3 different Caribbean islands, each of which has its own character. A good story, a solid story, if not a literary masterpiece.
kmaddy's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
chelzabeth's review against another edition
3.0
Émile first meets the Ducksworths when he’s young, then again when he’s older and in college. His friend Albert is marrying the eldest Ducksworth daughter and brings Émile along with him to meet Peter Ducksworth, her father. Peter is no longer the energetic man Émile met in Trinidad. He’s an old, overweight alcoholic with two daughters who manipulate him, trying to get his property when he dies. But Corinne is also no longer the young girl she was when Émile met her. She’s going into college now, and he’s instantly attracted to her.
Corinne’s oldest sister Glynis plans to marry Albert for his money, and somehow Albert is so blinded by her beauty that he doesn’t realize this, insisting on going forward with the wedding despite every (obvious) red flag, including her endless flirtations with her younger sister’s husband, Douglas.
Full review here.
Corinne’s oldest sister Glynis plans to marry Albert for his money, and somehow Albert is so blinded by her beauty that he doesn’t realize this, insisting on going forward with the wedding despite every (obvious) red flag, including her endless flirtations with her younger sister’s husband, Douglas.
Full review here.
rimike's review
2.0
Hugely disappointing. King Lear is one of the most majestic and challenging works ever penned, plumbing the depths of human cruelty and depravity, precariously balancing against those forces our capacity for love, loyalty, and forgiveness, doing so in language that pushes the very limits of what words can express. What's the point of writing a contemporary novel based on such a tragic monument if you're not going to at least take a stab at some of that? Elizabeth Nunez's Even in Paradise settles for just cribbing its plot and its character list (going so far as to have the narrator comment on the parallels several times, even grad-studentsplaining them to other characters), in language that barely ever rises above the pedestrian. Even where the novel does something interesting and original — transposing the story to modern-day Trinidad, Barbados, and Jamaica, with their varied and troubling legacies of colonial exploitation and the persistence of white privilege — it doesn't so much explore those themes as tentatively allude to them, then back away to focus more on the soap-opera of the plot's domestic conflicts. That plot unfolds so ploddingly that it never gains momentum (in contrast with its source, which plunges us into the disastrous division of Lear's estate, his rejection of Cordelia, and the machinations of Goneril, Regan, and Edmund within the first scene, the novel doesn't get around to that plot point till about 2/3 of the way through), and caps it off with a meek little plot twist that you can spot a mile away. I sure hope I'll be more impressed by Edward St. Aubyn's and Preti Taneja's takes on the material.
readingtheend's review
3.0
Okay, Elizabeth Nunez got me good about two-thirds of the way through her latest book, Even in Paradise.
I was like, Oo, a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban? SOUNDS GREAT, and I googled it thinking probably Cesaire, and while Cesaire did in fact write a play that retells The Tempest, the narrator of Even in Paradise was in fact referring to Nunez’s own 2006 novel, Prospero’s Daughter.
You got me, Elizabeth Nunez. You got me good.
If Elizabeth Nunez wanted to make it her thing to retell all the Shakespeare plays with Caribbean settings, I’d be here for it. Even in Paradise is a retelling of King Lear: Wealthy white Peter Ducksworth has moved from Trinidad to Barbados — the cynical say to find white husbands for his three daughters — and now, a few years later, he has decided to divide his properties among his daughters now, to avoid future strife. Strife ensues anyway.
So, as I confessed to Whiskey Jenny on our most recent podcast, I’ve never read or seen King Lear. What I know of King Lear has come to me through cultural osmosis, and as such I can’t speak much to the manner in which Nunez adapts it. I assume the Cordelia character was a drip on purpose? As a nod to the original?
In fact Even in Paradise reminded me of nothing so much as The Great Gatsby. Like Nick Carraway, our narrator Emile is drawn into the lives of the careless rich by his friendship with a man making an unwise romantic decision — in this case, Emile’s friend Albert has contracted a hasty engagement with Glynis Duckworth. Also like Gatbsy, it’s the story of people who cannot un-entwine love from money in their own minds, let alone in their lives and actions; and, of course, it ends in tragedy.
(Less tragedy than King Lear, however! I understand Lear has some eye stuff?)
Though Even in Paradise isn’t, on the surface, the type of book I would expect to enjoy (I read it because some blogger sometime years ago spoke well of Elizabeth Nunez and her name stuck in my head), I ended up thinking it was terrific. The inheritance plotline focuses on land owned by the Duckworths and the plans of the two older sisters to develop it into a profitable hotel that will exclude local people from making use of it, as they have for years. Nunez never permits her readers to shut their eyes to the specters of slavery and oppression that haunt Trinidad’s and Barbados’s history and continue to inform the lives and motives of these characters. She’s thoughtful about race and prejudice and history in a way that I absolutely love, and I will definitely be checking out her Tempest adaptation later this year.
Lebanese Diaspora Watch: So you know how a while ago, I instituted the Lebanese Diaspora Watch? Because I read about Lebanese citizens in Liberia and Brazil in rapid succession and was totally baffled? NOT A FLUKE. Here we find a Lebanese diaspora in Trinidad too!
See, now this answers my first question of why this specific Lebanese population left Lebanon/Syria. I had to do some googling to discover why Trinidad in particular, and the internet suggests it was Trinidad because wicked ticketing agents sold these immigrants tickets to America but then instead sent them to the Caribbean. And the immigrants would be like, Well, shit. Here we are, I guess. I admit that once I found this explanation, I stopped fact-checking. That is the explanation that I want to be true. Substantial Lebanese-American diaspora in Trinidad solely because of trickery. What a weird world we have.
Is anyone an Elizabeth Nunez fan? If you inherited land from a family member, what would you use it for? (Don’t say hotel. That sounds horrible. That sounds like so much trouble.) (No, say hotel if hotel is what you’d do with it.)
As a writer from my homeland put it in her fictionalized version of a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban: Pass [the Miranda test] and I believe you. Fail it and all you say about the races being equal, that character, not color, is what matters, becomes theoretical.
I was like, Oo, a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban? SOUNDS GREAT, and I googled it thinking probably Cesaire, and while Cesaire did in fact write a play that retells The Tempest, the narrator of Even in Paradise was in fact referring to Nunez’s own 2006 novel, Prospero’s Daughter.
You got me, Elizabeth Nunez. You got me good.
If Elizabeth Nunez wanted to make it her thing to retell all the Shakespeare plays with Caribbean settings, I’d be here for it. Even in Paradise is a retelling of King Lear: Wealthy white Peter Ducksworth has moved from Trinidad to Barbados — the cynical say to find white husbands for his three daughters — and now, a few years later, he has decided to divide his properties among his daughters now, to avoid future strife. Strife ensues anyway.
So, as I confessed to Whiskey Jenny on our most recent podcast, I’ve never read or seen King Lear. What I know of King Lear has come to me through cultural osmosis, and as such I can’t speak much to the manner in which Nunez adapts it. I assume the Cordelia character was a drip on purpose? As a nod to the original?
In fact Even in Paradise reminded me of nothing so much as The Great Gatsby. Like Nick Carraway, our narrator Emile is drawn into the lives of the careless rich by his friendship with a man making an unwise romantic decision — in this case, Emile’s friend Albert has contracted a hasty engagement with Glynis Duckworth. Also like Gatbsy, it’s the story of people who cannot un-entwine love from money in their own minds, let alone in their lives and actions; and, of course, it ends in tragedy.
(Less tragedy than King Lear, however! I understand Lear has some eye stuff?)
Though Even in Paradise isn’t, on the surface, the type of book I would expect to enjoy (I read it because some blogger sometime years ago spoke well of Elizabeth Nunez and her name stuck in my head), I ended up thinking it was terrific. The inheritance plotline focuses on land owned by the Duckworths and the plans of the two older sisters to develop it into a profitable hotel that will exclude local people from making use of it, as they have for years. Nunez never permits her readers to shut their eyes to the specters of slavery and oppression that haunt Trinidad’s and Barbados’s history and continue to inform the lives and motives of these characters. She’s thoughtful about race and prejudice and history in a way that I absolutely love, and I will definitely be checking out her Tempest adaptation later this year.
Lebanese Diaspora Watch: So you know how a while ago, I instituted the Lebanese Diaspora Watch? Because I read about Lebanese citizens in Liberia and Brazil in rapid succession and was totally baffled? NOT A FLUKE. Here we find a Lebanese diaspora in Trinidad too!
Georges Glazal, Albert’s father, belonged to a long line of Syrian Lebanese families who were among the last immigrants to Trinidad during the colonial era. Syrians, we called them, whether they were from Syria or Lebanon, Lebanon having been part of Syria when the first immigrants arrived on the island. Almost all of them were Orthodox Maronite Christians fleeing persecution from the ever-widening spread of Islam across the Middle East. In Trinidad the Maronite Syrian-Lebanese immigrants joined the Catholic Church.
See, now this answers my first question of why this specific Lebanese population left Lebanon/Syria. I had to do some googling to discover why Trinidad in particular, and the internet suggests it was Trinidad because wicked ticketing agents sold these immigrants tickets to America but then instead sent them to the Caribbean. And the immigrants would be like, Well, shit. Here we are, I guess. I admit that once I found this explanation, I stopped fact-checking. That is the explanation that I want to be true. Substantial Lebanese-American diaspora in Trinidad solely because of trickery. What a weird world we have.
Is anyone an Elizabeth Nunez fan? If you inherited land from a family member, what would you use it for? (Don’t say hotel. That sounds horrible. That sounds like so much trouble.) (No, say hotel if hotel is what you’d do with it.)