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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
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