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A review by constantreader471
A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes
3.0
3.5 stars rounded down for a book of uneven literary fiction. The first third of this book uses the Jamaican patois spoken by most people in Jamaica. Sometimes there is a translation. When there is no translation, you must sound out the words phonetically. I found this to be a distraction. The book is a love story between two people who are attracted to each other from childhood. But life intervenes and they are separated for several years. Some of the narrative is in the form of stream of consciousness of various characters, which I didn't enjoy.
Pros: The prose was lyrical at times.
One quote: "The grandmother, a longheaded woman of the countryside, tells me, Yu nuh need fi to deh so,' you do not need this long explanation of watery origins, since the ancestors of every Jamaican came over the sea, most of them in the ship's cakka, and moreover are we not an island, surrounded by water? So anyone born here is a child of water, and no more to be said."
It took me 19 days to read this book.
Thanks to Akashic Books for sending me this book through LibraryThing.
Pros: The prose was lyrical at times.
One quote: "The grandmother, a longheaded woman of the countryside, tells me, Yu nuh need fi to deh so,' you do not need this long explanation of watery origins, since the ancestors of every Jamaican came over the sea, most of them in the ship's cakka, and moreover are we not an island, surrounded by water? So anyone born here is a child of water, and no more to be said."
It took me 19 days to read this book.
Thanks to Akashic Books for sending me this book through LibraryThing.