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sarah984's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
slow-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? It's complicated
3.5
This is a fictionalized account of people affected by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Each chapter is the account of a different person from their point of view. I liked the ways the characters connected and saw one another, and the variety of experiences that are included. Unfortunately to me there were too many similar characters (though I loved Sonia and I liked Anne's perspective) and I wasn't a fan of the first person POV, especially for characters who died during the story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Grief, Death, Child death, Rape, Suicide, and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Ableism, Confinement, Violence, Genocide, Sexual content, and Animal death
Minor: Homophobia, Racism, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, Child abuse, Mental illness, Bullying, Car accident, Fire/Fire injury, and Misogyny
just_one_more_paige's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This is the sixth book in my slow-but-steady read-through of the 2022 Aspen Words longlist. They just announced the shortlist, actually, and, while I still plan to finish the read-through, I have to say that my totally random reading order choices were quite on point, because of the 6 I have now read, 4 were in the final 5 on the shortlist!
What Storm, What Thunder is a literary recounting of the 2021 earthquake that struck Haiti; the before, during, and after, of the disaster, from a number of different perspectives. Told in vignette style, each of the characters get a single (though encompassing) chapter of page time to give witness to their experiences, with the one exception of the elderly market woman, Ma Lou, whose voice both opens and closes the novel. While their stories are completely individual to their own lives, internal and external reckonings, and truths, there is a theme of interconnectedness among them, as each ties into the others in some way (think Girl Woman Other style).
This novel carried with it enough emotional force to rival the strength of the earthquake whose devastation it enumerates. I must start by pointing out that there are CWs for almost everything you can think of in these pages, death (including child and parental), physical and sexual violence, (general) environmental trauma, grief, a variety medical/injury content, and likely more that I am missing. But for all that, Chancy is able to keep the story focused on the characters themselves, and their reactions and day-to-day experiences of both the natural and man-made aspects of the destruction. We get glimpses into the lives of characters like Richard, a wealthy businessman back for a big sales pitch meeting in the home country he left behind for good; Sonia and Dieudonné, business partners in some less-than-socially-accepted lines of work; Didier, a young Haitian immigrant cab driver in Boston; Sara, a mother living now in an IDP camp and mourning the loss of all her children; Olivier, a father forced to leave his family by grief and the need to find work; Taffia, a young girl who experiences unspeakable violence in an IDP camp after the violence she lived through during the earthquake; Jonas, a young boy just celebrating his 11th birthday; Anne, an architect working for a global NGO. They are visceral stories. Full of life (and death) and truly tangible. Which, in reading the Afterward and a bit more about the author, makes sense, since many of these vignettes were informed by real stories of of the earthquake, by survivors or families of those who died, that were told to Chancy over the years (both solicited, through her work in connecting/networking in the aftermath, as well as unsolicited).
It was profoundly affecting to read (and listen - as I also had access to the audiobook) this sweeping collection of stories of the effects of this natural disaster on the country and people of Haiti. And the ring of truth in these stories makes it all the more intense. I honestly haven't read anything fictional (or, really, nonfictional, outside the news I read at the time) about this earthquake in Haiti. And though reading this was an emotional cataclysm, it was also breathtaking in the stark portrayal of physical and psychological tragedy in the face of unmitigated environmental destruction. We see snippets of the characters pre-earthquake, as well as in the moment it hits, the immediate aftermath, throughout the longer term recovery, and including those with a variety of coping mechanisms and resiliency, as well as those who descend too far into grief and loss to make it back out. There are myriad introspections and explorations of before and after, and especially of the not-knowing in between, the reality of suspension within a nightmare. And as you can tell from the example characters listed above, we hear from those who have always lived in Haiti, those that had come back, those that had left Haiti and never returned. We hear from the natives and the transplants, the young and the old, the families and the single people, the dreamers and the realists, the victims and the “helpers” and those that span the divide, the physically present and the emotionally distant, the emotionally distant but physically present. It’s such a fully encompassing representation.
The vastness of the violence in the moment and the aftermath is incomprehensible. And yet in the final chapter, when we revisit Ma Lou, we are left with a pervasive hope for renewal, and looking forward. Overall, this was a stunning work of literature, one that gives voice to so many who haven't had that chance (and many who now never will). A few times throughout this novel, characters ruminate on the many people whose names and lives will be remembered by only their few family/friends who survived and, with time, no one. And yet, their bones are part of the land of their country now and forever, and, here, Chauncy's words memorialize them for the world, if not individually, than in honor and spirit. Gutting, staggering, and completely deserving of its shortlist spot (and more).
“We treated everyone alike. They had become all the same, were always the same.”
“What we had learned from the hustle was that once you got to the top of the hill, no one cared how you got there.”
“It’s like this: when everything becomes chaos and disorder, you begin to understand that control is only illusion and repression.”
“Douz: when something terrible happens to you, it feels like a dream at first. Not until the pain and the panic settle does it seem real. […] We all know – however is it we will ourselves to move through this: afterward, the terrible thing never goes away. It dims but remains, lurking, an uninvited guest, a leech. The more you try to forget, the more it hangs on. One side is scissor to the other, back and forth, conjoined, not able to leave. The feeling uniting dream and pain lasts eternally, but you yearn for the return to a blank space, the in-between suspension between the two before they came to be jointed. You yearn for the sweet, open-eyed innocence, the comforting warmth of the blankness, to never become aware of the jointing itself, of then having to live in the after, always, remembering the before.”
“…sometimes, I do think that the dead are luckier than we are.”
“No one will know the difference between the good and the bad. The bones won’t give up the secrets of who they once were.”
“…I was struck by a simple realization, that there was a beauty and majesty to ruins: they lent testimony to the past.”
“Ruins had meaning: they revealed time like nothing else could, outlived bodies, love stories, everything. They should stand.”
“All that was man-made fell, including time, buckled into the sky with nightfall.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Violence, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence
Moderate: Colonisation, Blood, Alcohol, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Xenophobia, Stalking, Gun violence, and Pregnancy
serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Twelve years ago today, on 12 January 2010 Haiti was rocked by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, centred about 25km west of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 people lost their lives.
Myriam J.A. Chancy takes that catastrophe and uses it as the central thread of her novel What Storm, What Thunder. The novel reads like a collection of interconnected short stories, each looking at the experiences of a different character before, during and after the quake. Each of the characters is connected to at least one of the others in some way, which provides an additional element of unity. Since each character has a different experience, the overall picture is richer, more nuanced and more accurate.
This book blew me away. Having lived through an earthquake that forever changed my city I can attest that the depictions of a large quake are very accurate. I’m thankful that the physical damage, loss of life, and major injuries here were nowhere near as severe as in Haiti. Chancy does a good job of highlighting some of the reasons for that. She also rightly highlights deficiencies in the relief effort and reconstruction process - issues like racism, colonialism, capitalism, classism, the impact of sexism and misogyny, bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption and a lack of care and compassion.
While the earthquake provides the core of this book it is more than just an earthquake story. The characters are all richly drawn and from a variety of backgrounds. By telling their stories before and after the earthquake the reader is treated to a vibrant and colourful depiction of Haitian society, the good and the bad, and the ways this was altered by the quake - beyond the obvious loss of life and destruction of buildings.
The writing was gorgeous. People and place vividly came to life for me. I especially admire the way that the the earthquake and it’s aftermath were realistically portrayed - there is terror, injury, death, grief and suffering - but in a way that didn’t feel exploitative. Trauma porn this is not.
Overall a powerful, rich novel that effectively and seamlessly combines human story with pointed social commentary.
Myriam J.A. Chancy takes that catastrophe and uses it as the central thread of her novel What Storm, What Thunder. The novel reads like a collection of interconnected short stories, each looking at the experiences of a different character before, during and after the quake. Each of the characters is connected to at least one of the others in some way, which provides an additional element of unity. Since each character has a different experience, the overall picture is richer, more nuanced and more accurate.
This book blew me away. Having lived through an earthquake that forever changed my city I can attest that the depictions of a large quake are very accurate. I’m thankful that the physical damage, loss of life, and major injuries here were nowhere near as severe as in Haiti. Chancy does a good job of highlighting some of the reasons for that. She also rightly highlights deficiencies in the relief effort and reconstruction process - issues like racism, colonialism, capitalism, classism, the impact of sexism and misogyny, bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption and a lack of care and compassion.
While the earthquake provides the core of this book it is more than just an earthquake story. The characters are all richly drawn and from a variety of backgrounds. By telling their stories before and after the earthquake the reader is treated to a vibrant and colourful depiction of Haitian society, the good and the bad, and the ways this was altered by the quake - beyond the obvious loss of life and destruction of buildings.
The writing was gorgeous. People and place vividly came to life for me. I especially admire the way that the the earthquake and it’s aftermath were realistically portrayed - there is terror, injury, death, grief and suffering - but in a way that didn’t feel exploitative. Trauma porn this is not.
Overall a powerful, rich novel that effectively and seamlessly combines human story with pointed social commentary.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, Medical content, Sexual violence, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Misogyny and Racism
now_booking's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
It’s hard to critique a book like this just because of the scope of what it’s trying to do. Technically, it’s a novel- I think it’s sort of what’s called a composite novel featuring short stories of various individuals from a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, who were affected by the devastating 2010 earthquakes in Haiti. The characters are loosely linked or related but also have vastly different story trajectories. But even though it’s this sort of story cycle format, the author’s editorial voice is still very much front and centre as an omniscient observer, providing social commentary and critiques about reactions to the disaster that the characters might not have been privy to (e.g. CNN coverage and international press) as well as historical precedence for racial capitalism and capitalist imperialism that exacerbated the impact of the earthquake.
The book features quite a few characters whose lives around the earthquake (whether they make it or not) we get to observe in a sort of short slice of life format. There’s Sonia and Dieudonné who are queer outsiders but who have turned that status into a form of insider status. There’s Sonia’s complex family with her alcoholic father, her mother and her siblings- Didier, Taffia and Paul- all of whom have suffered some trauma with and without the earthquake. There’s Ma Lou, Dieudonné’s aunt from whom they buy foodstuff at the market and her estranged son, Richard, who is now a big shot in France with a white wife, but whose family implodes when secrets of his past in Haiti come into the open. And then there’s the little boy, Jonas, who runs errands for Ma Lou, and who comes from an incredibly loving but poor family with his two sisters and his parents Sara and Olivier who are terribly in love.
As one can expect with this subject matter, this is a book about loss- it is not one that is hopeful or especially healing, but then when an estimated 250,000 people were lost in the Earthquake, there’s no getting over that… certainly not in 300 pages of literature. The themes that come through with this are obviously grief and trauma-centred, but because of the author’s strong voice in this, there was also a lot of the stories wrapped in social commentary on coloniality and colonialism and capitalism but also failed humanitarianism and a sort of necropolitics that didn’t really care about the survival of the Haitian people post-Earthquake. In addition to the loss of lives and the loss of children and generations of changemakers and activists, the loss of innocence and the loss of (Western) faith were significant themes. Two of the more introspective younger male characters, Didier and Olivier, also have a lot of introspection around the idea of whiteness as property (a Cheryl Harris phrasing but which is perfectly summarized by these two men’s reflections) that either confers privilege and value and worthiness to live or as an elimination of Black identity, autonomy and personhood. This latter viewpoint comes from Olivier, who feels emasculated by his powerlessness in the face of the trauma and by his experience at a northern work camp and explores whiteness and hopelessness similarly to Didier, looking at it not as privilege but as condemnation, colorlessness, zombification, and giving in to becoming a tool for another’s wealth.
To me, this book seems to often forget that it is fiction and frequently reads almost like academic text when it abandons storytelling for dropping statistics and facts- this is not a bad thing, but it often feels like two separate projects. That said, this also makes absolute sense in the context of this book which is more or less a fictional biography of what happened in the 2010 Haitian Earthquakes. The author in the Afterward discusses how this is based on many stories told to her in the aftermath of the earthquake and defines her standpoint for telling this story the way she did. One thing that was a little sad for me was getting involved in people’s stories and not really knowing what became of them because we get such slice of life pieces of them in this book. But that’s absolutely fitting in a book about circumstances that were abrupt, shocking, providing no closure, no certainty, no proper endings or answers for so many. That we’re left somewhat adrift and somewhat broken still is but a fraction of what the characters go through. I can’t imagine how this author could have written this book detached without her voice jumping in as it did to propose a final solution of reparation (through Olivier) or to critique philanthropic and charitable responses to Haiti’s earthquake relief and how that cycled back to capitalism and governmentalism (Olivier again). Is having the author’s editorial voice so strongly in a novel, my specific taste? No, but I can’t see how else this could have gone for this scale of disaster and trauma and injustice. The peripatetic nature of going through so many different characters at so many different moments is also not typically to my taste, but I think it makes the story richer in experiences. I suppose taste-wise, I would have liked perhaps more of an in-depth focus/story on a fewer amount of central characters.
Overall, this is a desperately sad and traumatic book that I can imagine doesn’t even begin to approach the levels of what Haitian people went through (and are going through) before and after the Earthquake. The author conveys in this book the hopelessness and loss of the circumstances and the fact that the answer perhaps lies not to “the West,” and in modern views of “building back better” as if there’s some silver lining in this tragedy, but in old ways of healing and community and fighting oppression that are ingrained in the history of the island. This is not a book that one “enjoys,” but it is an important book that one reads so as never to forget those who were lost.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publishers, Tin House, with no obligation to review.
The book features quite a few characters whose lives around the earthquake (whether they make it or not) we get to observe in a sort of short slice of life format. There’s Sonia and Dieudonné who are queer outsiders but who have turned that status into a form of insider status. There’s Sonia’s complex family with her alcoholic father, her mother and her siblings- Didier, Taffia and Paul- all of whom have suffered some trauma with and without the earthquake. There’s Ma Lou, Dieudonné’s aunt from whom they buy foodstuff at the market and her estranged son, Richard, who is now a big shot in France with a white wife, but whose family implodes when secrets of his past in Haiti come into the open. And then there’s the little boy, Jonas, who runs errands for Ma Lou, and who comes from an incredibly loving but poor family with his two sisters and his parents Sara and Olivier who are terribly in love.
As one can expect with this subject matter, this is a book about loss- it is not one that is hopeful or especially healing, but then when an estimated 250,000 people were lost in the Earthquake, there’s no getting over that… certainly not in 300 pages of literature. The themes that come through with this are obviously grief and trauma-centred, but because of the author’s strong voice in this, there was also a lot of the stories wrapped in social commentary on coloniality and colonialism and capitalism but also failed humanitarianism and a sort of necropolitics that didn’t really care about the survival of the Haitian people post-Earthquake. In addition to the loss of lives and the loss of children and generations of changemakers and activists, the loss of innocence and the loss of (Western) faith were significant themes. Two of the more introspective younger male characters, Didier and Olivier, also have a lot of introspection around the idea of whiteness as property (a Cheryl Harris phrasing but which is perfectly summarized by these two men’s reflections) that either confers privilege and value and worthiness to live or as an elimination of Black identity, autonomy and personhood. This latter viewpoint comes from Olivier, who feels emasculated by his powerlessness in the face of the trauma and by his experience at a northern work camp and explores whiteness and hopelessness similarly to Didier, looking at it not as privilege but as condemnation, colorlessness, zombification, and giving in to becoming a tool for another’s wealth.
To me, this book seems to often forget that it is fiction and frequently reads almost like academic text when it abandons storytelling for dropping statistics and facts- this is not a bad thing, but it often feels like two separate projects. That said, this also makes absolute sense in the context of this book which is more or less a fictional biography of what happened in the 2010 Haitian Earthquakes. The author in the Afterward discusses how this is based on many stories told to her in the aftermath of the earthquake and defines her standpoint for telling this story the way she did. One thing that was a little sad for me was getting involved in people’s stories and not really knowing what became of them because we get such slice of life pieces of them in this book. But that’s absolutely fitting in a book about circumstances that were abrupt, shocking, providing no closure, no certainty, no proper endings or answers for so many. That we’re left somewhat adrift and somewhat broken still is but a fraction of what the characters go through. I can’t imagine how this author could have written this book detached without her voice jumping in as it did to propose a final solution of reparation (through Olivier) or to critique philanthropic and charitable responses to Haiti’s earthquake relief and how that cycled back to capitalism and governmentalism (Olivier again). Is having the author’s editorial voice so strongly in a novel, my specific taste? No, but I can’t see how else this could have gone for this scale of disaster and trauma and injustice. The peripatetic nature of going through so many different characters at so many different moments is also not typically to my taste, but I think it makes the story richer in experiences. I suppose taste-wise, I would have liked perhaps more of an in-depth focus/story on a fewer amount of central characters.
Overall, this is a desperately sad and traumatic book that I can imagine doesn’t even begin to approach the levels of what Haitian people went through (and are going through) before and after the Earthquake. The author conveys in this book the hopelessness and loss of the circumstances and the fact that the answer perhaps lies not to “the West,” and in modern views of “building back better” as if there’s some silver lining in this tragedy, but in old ways of healing and community and fighting oppression that are ingrained in the history of the island. This is not a book that one “enjoys,” but it is an important book that one reads so as never to forget those who were lost.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publishers, Tin House, with no obligation to review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Cancer, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Rape, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Violence
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Colonisation, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Ableism, Biphobia, Child abuse, Pedophilia, and Religious bigotry
internationalreads's review
dark
emotional
informative
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Blood, Bullying, Child death, Colonisation, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Homophobia, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Violence
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