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A review by elizabethgarcia
Summer Lightning and Other Stories by Olive Senior
4.0
"I don't care if I don't turn teacher with press hair and new dress. I believe it better to be someone that can laugh and make other people laugh and be happy too."
First published in 1986, this is a lovely collection of short stories, mostly set in rural parts of Jamaica at a time when people made their own clothes, electricity and running water was a dream, and hardly any of the children went to high school.
I thoroughly enjoyed the writing and found the patois and non-traditional punctuation absolutely fine to get used to. The skill of Senior to create such different and vivid characters, often laced with humour, as well as moralistic undertones was great to read as my first foray into Senior's writing. I was particularly impressed with how each separate narrator or protagonist in each short story was written in a wholly new voice from the last.
"just in case Archdeacon can stop for tea Auntie Mary bake a fruitcake a upside-down cake a three-layer cake a chocolate cake for she don't know which he prefer also some coconut cookies for although the Archdeacon is an Englishman don't say he don't like his little Jamaican dainties."
Favourites of mine were: Summer Lightning, Do Angels Wear Brassieres and The Boy Who Loved Ice Cream.
First published in 1986, this is a lovely collection of short stories, mostly set in rural parts of Jamaica at a time when people made their own clothes, electricity and running water was a dream, and hardly any of the children went to high school.
I thoroughly enjoyed the writing and found the patois and non-traditional punctuation absolutely fine to get used to. The skill of Senior to create such different and vivid characters, often laced with humour, as well as moralistic undertones was great to read as my first foray into Senior's writing. I was particularly impressed with how each separate narrator or protagonist in each short story was written in a wholly new voice from the last.
"just in case Archdeacon can stop for tea Auntie Mary bake a fruitcake a upside-down cake a three-layer cake a chocolate cake for she don't know which he prefer also some coconut cookies for although the Archdeacon is an Englishman don't say he don't like his little Jamaican dainties."
Favourites of mine were: Summer Lightning, Do Angels Wear Brassieres and The Boy Who Loved Ice Cream.