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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
The title refers to Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier's use of a secret police force known by the Haitian people as the Tonton Macoutes (i.e. the Haitian version of the boogeyman) who come at dawn and "break the dew" as they drag people out of their houses to be interrogated, tortured, and killed.
The novel's central character is a former Tonton Macoute who has fled Haiti and is trying to live a quiet, anonymous life as a barber in New York. It opens with a story from the viewpoint of his daughter, who thinks her father was a prisoner, not a guard. Each chapter afterward is told by a relative, victim, or neighbor of the barber, and it ends with his own story. Almost every chapter in the book was originally a short story, and they were collected together, modified, and added to in order to create this novel.
It does feel episodic and switches between many narrators, some of whom are only tangentially related to The Dew Breaker. But Danticat's prose is beautiful, and the way she frames the story is quite clever. I have read one other book by this author that I also enjoyed, and I plan to read more by her.
The novel's central character is a former Tonton Macoute who has fled Haiti and is trying to live a quiet, anonymous life as a barber in New York. It opens with a story from the viewpoint of his daughter, who thinks her father was a prisoner, not a guard. Each chapter afterward is told by a relative, victim, or neighbor of the barber, and it ends with his own story. Almost every chapter in the book was originally a short story, and they were collected together, modified, and added to in order to create this novel.
It does feel episodic and switches between many narrators, some of whom are only tangentially related to The Dew Breaker. But Danticat's prose is beautiful, and the way she frames the story is quite clever. I have read one other book by this author that I also enjoyed, and I plan to read more by her.
2.5 Stars rounded up to 3 because of Danticat's poetic prose
This book is 9 short stories that are (very) loosely linked together. The linkages were not at all linear, which is normally fine, but were also very minimal. For example, you don't really find out how the 2nd and 3rd stories are linked to the 1st story until you finish the 5th story. I feel like I would normally enjoy this kind of puzzle reading, and I almost always enjoy short stories, but it made it very difficult for me to enjoy while listening to the audio version.
Each story is enjoyable on its own, and Edwidge Danticat is a great writer who has a way of 'making sadness beautiful', as one of the characters in the book is described. If you do pick this one up, don't make the mistake I did of trying to connect the dots to the point of not enjoying the stories.
Here's some examples of her writing from this one:
“It was the dread of being wrong, of harming the wrong man, of making the wrong woman a widow and the wrong child an orphan. It was the realization that he would never know why—why one single person had been given the power to destroy his entire life.”
“Strange how people with means can make the less fortunate feel special by putting them to work.”
“I thought exposing a few details of my life would inspire them to do the same and slowly we’d parcel out our sorrows, each walking out with fewer than we’d carried in.”
“Life was neither something you defended by hiding nor surrendered calmly on other people's terms, but something you lived bravely, out in the open, and that if you had to lose it, you should lose it on your own terms.”
“My mother used to say that we'll all have three deaths: the one when our breath leaves our bodies to rejoin the air, the one when we are out back in the earth, and the one that will erase us completely and no one will remember us at all.”
“She made sadness beautiful.”
This book is 9 short stories that are (very) loosely linked together. The linkages were not at all linear, which is normally fine, but were also very minimal. For example, you don't really find out how the 2nd and 3rd stories are linked to the 1st story until you finish the 5th story. I feel like I would normally enjoy this kind of puzzle reading, and I almost always enjoy short stories, but it made it very difficult for me to enjoy while listening to the audio version.
Each story is enjoyable on its own, and Edwidge Danticat is a great writer who has a way of 'making sadness beautiful', as one of the characters in the book is described. If you do pick this one up, don't make the mistake I did of trying to connect the dots to the point of not enjoying the stories.
Here's some examples of her writing from this one:
“It was the dread of being wrong, of harming the wrong man, of making the wrong woman a widow and the wrong child an orphan. It was the realization that he would never know why—why one single person had been given the power to destroy his entire life.”
“Strange how people with means can make the less fortunate feel special by putting them to work.”
“I thought exposing a few details of my life would inspire them to do the same and slowly we’d parcel out our sorrows, each walking out with fewer than we’d carried in.”
“Life was neither something you defended by hiding nor surrendered calmly on other people's terms, but something you lived bravely, out in the open, and that if you had to lose it, you should lose it on your own terms.”
“My mother used to say that we'll all have three deaths: the one when our breath leaves our bodies to rejoin the air, the one when we are out back in the earth, and the one that will erase us completely and no one will remember us at all.”
“She made sadness beautiful.”
emotional
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Rating this slightly higher than the novel because the narration style added to the text and made reading it slightly more bearable.
emotional
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was absolutely not for me, but I had to read it for a class. I honestly believe it would've worked better in terms of continuity and connections between the characters if it had been written as a novel instead of as overlapping short stories. Overall I was not impressed.
I really enjoy Edwidge Danticat's writing, and this is no different. Powerful, thoughtful writing.
You can tell by her use of language that Danticat was first a poet. This novel in stories delves into the lives of Haitian-Americans, their pasts and memories and the violence that connects them. The characters all intersect in subtle and artful ways, and the stories are rich with the pain of displacement and finding identity in America. Beautifully written.
I was excited to read this book and initially thought it would be similar to The Brief History of 7 Killings by Marlon James considering its a novel about the Dew Breaker from the perspectives of those who knew him in some shape or form. Although this stands true to the construction of the novel, and the narratives were written beautifully, this book missed the mark for me. I felt the character of the Dew Breaker was underdeveloped. I learned more about each individual telling their story than the Dew Breaker which was bummer. There were several stories that appeared to have no connection at all to the Dew Breaker and left me puzzled. What kept me reading was Dandicat's superior story telling abilities and her beautiful writing. I'm curious to know why she chose to write the book from various perspectives, some chapters with no real mention of the Dew Breaker. What was the reasoning behind that.
Overall the novel was semi-enjoyable. Definitely not a favorite. I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone, Dandicat has too many other amazing novels.
Overall the novel was semi-enjoyable. Definitely not a favorite. I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone, Dandicat has too many other amazing novels.
Quote: “Life was neither something you defended by hiding nor surrendered calmly on other people's terms, but something you lived bravely, out in the open, and that if you had to lose it, you should lose it on your own terms.”
Well written. Kind of like a book of short stories and yet all of the stories are connected and, in a way, progress the story.