Author: Nalo Hopkinson
Publisher: Open Road Media
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
This novel made no sense at all to me. I was interested in reading it because it was about slavery in the Caribbean (so I thought), but the real story of that horror was demeaned by the author's amateur attempts at trying to imbue her novel with "kewl", and by her bringing "magic" into it.
I know that superstition was (and is) a part of primitive people's lives, and that Victorians believed in spirits, but having characters conjure up a vision from a chamber pot full of urine and menstrual fluid seemed to me to be not only gross, but to cheapen the story being told about the conditions under which slaves were forced to live, and turning the whole thing into a gaudy circus. And that bit wasn't even in the Caribbean, it was in Paris!
I have no idea what that had to do with anything because I quit reading this novel at this point. I couldn't continue because I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at how sorry it truly was. Somehow I'm thinking that this isn't the effect you want to have on your reader when writing about a grotesque topic like slavery.
The misguided cuteness really swung into play between pages 38 and 50, and it was so ridiculous as to be a parody. After a chapter about a stillborn baby and its burial, we immediately get a page (39) containing only the world BREAK/ in bold block caps, followed by page which contains only two paragraphs describing some obscure, anonymous event which has played no part in the story so far, the next page contains only BEAT!, the next another three obscure paragraphs, the page bears only ONE-, the next only one paragraph, again obscure and anonymous, disconnected from the main story, the next has three dots, a down arrow, and the word DROP, the next more anonymous paragraphs, the next BLUES, and finally we get to another unnumbered chapter on page 49. I can't tell you what a thrill that was to read. I can't tell you because I was mourning, by that time, not for the dead child, but for tragically wasted trees.
If I’d wanted to read a humorous novel about slavery, which I don’t, I could no doubt have found one. If I’d wanted to read a parody, I could have written one. I've done it before! I actually wanted neither of these. I wanted an intelligent and serious story about slavery, not amateur experimental fiction designed with no other purpose, it seemed to me, than to gross out the reader with this day-late and dollar-short effort to be avant garde and ultra hip. I cannot recommend this novel based on what I read, and I certainly have no interest in reading more of this nor anything else by this author for that matter.
