A review by jacksontibet
Palmares by Gayl Jones

1.0

Maybe the fourth book that I've been unable to finish, ever. Had to stop 3/5 of the way in as it just got to be too much, dreading the act of reading it. Writing is awful, nothing is ever SAID. We the reader have no idea what's actually happening most of the time because our narrator ends most conversations/observations with some variation of "I didn't know what they meant" and so how are we supposed to know either? This is an attempt at some Gabriel Garcia Marquez style magical realism and it fails wildly and with a muted abandon. The same conversations are had over and over and our narrator doesn't know what people mean because most of them speak nonsense (all the witches, medicine men/women, spiritualists, etc) and nothing means anything. Just garbage.