Blackbeard nodded. “I was sure you’d figured that out. Yes, old Hurwood plans to raise his wife’s ghost from her dried head and plant it in the body of his daughter. Hard luck on the daughter, left with no body…”

Book Review:

Review by Bill Brody  (JUN 12, 2011)

My review is of a paperback reprint of a Tim Powers novel, On Stranger Tides, first published to a good deal of critical acclaim in 1987. No doubt the success of the new movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides inspired the reprint.

Voodoo plays a major role in this novel, in particular with regard to resurrection. Voodoo and other western systems of magic are all tied up with the relationship between magic, blood (and its analog, sea water) and cold iron. It turns out according to this tale at least that cold iron quenches magic. The magic of Europe has been much diminished in the 17th century due to steel, armor, swords and the other trappings of European material culture. Magic flourishes in the western hemisphere where blood still rules over steel. Blood is the antithesis of cold steel; it is likened to hot iron. Magicians typically have white gums because so much of their blood is in use for magic that they suffer congenital anemia.

Oh, and there are pirates galore; most notably Blackbeard, who we discover is a powerful magician in his own right. Blackbeard’s historic practice of going into battle with lit candles woven into his beard is explained by the revelation in this tale that his patron voodoo demon, his loa, is summoned by smoldering fire. Later in the story a lit cigar serves the same purpose.

Some truly freakish and slimy souls inhabit Powers’ Caribbean world of 17th century. The good people in our tale are not all that good or pure, but they at least try. The bad ones like Blackbeard and Hurwood are truly awful. Hurwood is clearly psychotic, driven to madness by the death of his wife. In his madness he carries her rotting head in a basket and has plotted to resurrect her soul into the body of his daughter, leaving the daughter without a body to call her own. Blackbeard captains a ship of zombies. Among Blackbeard’s other atrocities is manipulating someone to bludgeon-murder his wife in order to be blackmailed into becoming a vassal pirate.

In some ways it is odd to speak to anachronism or logical irregularity in a work about invented magic, but there is one thing that stands out as being off. Hurwood is a University Don, a scholar, who knows the work of Newton and the most up to date developments in science. His explanation of the magic environment surrounding the Fountain of Youth is profoundly anachronistic. He corresponds the locale to a quantum system with some features so precisely known that other aspects are required to be correspondingly unknowable. It should be noted that Newton, who many believe was the archetypical scientist, in reality spent a great deal of his professional life involved with alchemy, and can well be thought of as a magician in his own right. No one from that time and place could have entered into the mind-set of quantum uncertainty. Another quibble is that Jack Shandy, the protagonist is less interesting than the bad guys. Additionally, his love interest, Beth, Hurwood’s daughter, is almost a non-entity. It is not that Jack is two-dimensional or just a purely good guy; he has killed, betrayed and he clearly loves. His back-story is interesting. It is just that he comes off as somewhat vapid by comparison.

Powers is an extremely gifted storyteller His wit is unfailingly dry and brilliant. His powers of bizarre invention are pretty amazing. The plot flows, jumps and bubbles weaving one fantastic invention after another. I enjoyed On Stranger Tides a great deal and I am eager for the next gem from this wizard of off beat fantasy. Readers should be encouraged to explore the long list of his fantastic novels.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 57 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (April 26, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bill Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tim Powers
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

Bibliography:

• The Skies Discrowned (1976)
• An Epitaph in Rust (1976)
• The Drawing of the Dark (1979)
• The Anubis Gate (1983) 
• Dinner at Deviant’s Palace (1985)
• On Stranger Tides (1987; April 2011)
• The Stress of Her Regard (1989)
• Night Moves and Other Stories (2000)
• Declare (2001)
• Three Days to Never (2006)

Fault Lines:

• Last Call (1992)
• Expiration (1995)
• Earthquake Weather (1997)

Movies from Books

• Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides (May 2011)

“White men. White men like George Harwood. They all take, take, take. All the second-raters, those who aren’t good enough to survive in England, they come out to the West Indies and swan about. Buy land, build. Set up shop. They come and stay, ruining their second-rate minds. Is that what you want? To be married to such a man? A man who’ll ruin you too?”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (MAY 21, 2011)

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey takes an intriguingly different view of the corrosive impact of colonialism. This tale covers fifty years of tumultuous Trinidad history seen through the lives of a married couple–George and Sabine Harwood. The novel begins in 2006–fifty years after the arrival of the Harwoods in Trinidad. They are now in their 70s, and even though they’ve spent more than half a century together, they still, basically, don’t understand each other. Neither do they understand Trinidad. The big difference between George and Sabine, however, is that he thinks he understands Trinidad–whereas Sabine fully realizes that certain aspects of her adopted country will always elude her. Another huge difference between George and Sabine is that he loves Trinidad and cannot imagine living anywhere else. Years earlier, he blithely became a Trinidad citizen and never really gave much thought to the physical or moral consequences of committing to a country fraught with horrific poverty and tumultuous politics. George has always been very comfortable with being the White Man in a country where native blacks are exploited. Sabine, on the other hand, has never felt comfortable about being one of the white ruling class even though George insists that their Trinidadian standard of living is far superior to anything they could achieve in Britain.

The couple’s two adult children, Pasquale and Sebastian are living examples of the division of Trinidad and British culture; Pasquale is a pure Trinidadian deeply embedded in the culture. She speaks the local patois and is married into a prominent Trinidad family. Sebastian, on the other hand, a product of British boarding schools, is undiluted British and chooses to live in London. Although he considers that his parents led a “glamorous” life, to Sebastian, Trinidad is a place to go for a holiday–it’s certainly not home. George Harwood isn’t close to Sebastian while Sabine sometimes feels alienated from her daughter.

When the novel begins, George, now retired, is still extremely active. He writes a popular column in The Trinidad Guardian and interviews local celebrities such as cricketer Brian Lara, and he maintains his lifelong habit of frequenting black prostitutes. Sabine has never really established much of a social life, and most of the British population left during the bloodier periods of Trinidad’s recent history. She stays home with her servant/companion, Jennifer, takes valium, and drinks heavily. While George loves Trinidad and thinks he’s adjusted well to life there, Sabine understands that as relics of colonialism, they’re not welcome. She wanted to return to Britain years ago, but now it’s too late. A crisis occurs when Jennifer’s son Talbot is savagely beaten by local corrupt police. George mistakenly believes that as a white man he has some influence, and he gets involved.

The first half of the novel is set in 2006, and the second half goes back to 1956 when George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from Britain as newlyweds. George sees the job as a clerk with a shipping company as a wonderful opportunity and his French wife Sabine agrees–but with the provision that they stay for three years. But three years turns into a lifetime….

From the moment George disembarks from the ship that takes him to Trinidad until fifty years later, he remains a white colonial outsider who demands special privileges. Yet, if you asked George, he’d argue that he’s “adjusted” to life there. In reality he donned the costume of a white “master” and never gave that up–in spite of the fact that Trinidad became independent. On the other hand, Sabine, who hates the lifestyle of the white-colonialist-country-club crowd initially became involved with Trinidad politics mainly through her relationship with charismatic politician Eric Williams. From her first day in Trinidad, Sabine notes the injustices directed towards the native population, and the “country club” rules of the reigning whites. Sabine wants no part of colonial life, but she’s overruled by George. As a white man George sees a better future for himself and a better standard of living in Trinidad than back in England. To George, the issue of morality doesn’t enter into his decision to stay. Here’s George to Sabine on the subject of returning to England:

“What do you want me to do? Go back to a desk job in the City? Commute with my briefcase, going to work in the dark, coming home in the dark, on the train and the tube like so may of those poor fucks. I can’t do that. Here I’m someone. We know everyone. What do you want from me? To go back to Harrow on the fucking hill?”

Sabine, however, thinks that George’s motivation to stay is based on much uglier motives. In Trinidad, being “someone” also means being white and privileged:

“Isn’t that why you came here, why you accepted that lowly office job out here, a dot on the map? Out here you can be someone. You can be master, invent yourself, a little king.” George stood very still and calm; rage choked in his throat.

“We invented this island. Wasn’t that the whole point of the West Indies, eh? A get-rich-quick scheme for Europeans?”

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle is the history of a marriage torn apart by endless infidelities and the divisiveness of opposing beliefs. George is comfortable with being the “white master” and enjoys the attendant privileges–cheap local labour, cheap easily available prostitutes, and the lifestyle of landed gentry, but Sabine, who basically has nothing to occupy herself with, turns to valium and booze as George willfully ignores her request to leave Trinidad.

While the novel covers the history of the Harwoods’ marriage, it also covers fifty years of Trinidad history seen through Sabine’s eyes: the rise of the PNM, Trinidad Independence, and then as the promise of a better Trinidad turns sour, she recalls, Eric Williams, Geddes Granger, Stokely Carmichael, Black Power, riots, and a few Molotov cocktails. Through the Harwoods, Monique Roffey’s novel takes an intensely intimate look at colonialism and shows us that even those who in theory reap benefits from being the masters of the British Empire ultimately pay a high price for this “privilege.”

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AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (April 26, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Monique Roffey
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Anna In-Between by Elizabeth Nunez Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid

Bibliography:

• Sun Dog (2002; 2011)
• The White Woman of on the Green Bicycle (2009; April 2011 in US)

Nonfiction:

• With the Kisses of His Mouth (June 2011)

“The only thing we want is for you to put all the receipts from the supermarket, the pizza place if you take Ben for pie, whatever, in here. At the end of the week before you get paid, Mr. Bruckner or I will tally them up. If the total is a few cents off, fine, but generally if it’s more than a dollar you’re responsible for making it up. I think because it’s your first day you should take Ben to Gino’s for a slice. It’ll help you guys bond. Let’s see, what else?”

She stood with one leg crossed behind the other thinking about anything she might have forgot.

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (MAY 2, 2011)

Minding Ben is a combination coming-of-age story and mainstream fiction novel. At 16, Grace Caton left her small village in Trinidad to live the American Dream in New York City. But nothing went according to plan once she set foot in the States. The cousin she expected to meet her and with whom she was to live never showed up, so Grace had to fend for herself from day one, and she learns that life in the big city is difficult, complicated, unfair and lonely. She gets a break when Sylvia, an overweight immigrant who lives in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn offers her a place to stay, but that place to live comes with the strings of caring for kids, buying her cigarettes and lending her money.

Grace finally lands a job as a nanny to a family in Manhattan, but she’s never really comfortable with them and they harbor their own secrets. An upper middle upper-class couple, Sol Bruckner has some slimy tendencies, and Miriam takes pleasure in bossing Grace around and wants her to take nude photos as her pregnancy advances. But grace loves four-year-old Ben, so she puts up with extra demands, excessive chores and verbal manipulation and other slights. Grace also must contend with the off-and-on friendliness of neighborhood nannies who take their charges to the same park to gossip about who’s hired who and who’s sleeping with their bosses. Grace’s one friend in the mix is Kathy, a wannabe Jamaican who thinks every outfit can be jazzed up with a Bedazzler.

Born in Trinidad herself, Victoria Brown appears to write from her own experiences. Although the storyline is interesting, her characters unfortunately remain two-dimensional and don’t have the depth to pull off the story Brown has in mind. The best-developed character is Sylvia with her big personality so easy to anger and forgive, to give advice when it’s wanted and not and whom you have sympathy for even as she takes shameless advantage of Grace. One can sympathize with her inner turmoil—to go back to Trinidad to care for her ailing father or to stay a virtual slave in New York–but she doesn’t bounce off the page as one wants her to.

It’s interesting to learn about Trinidad and how many of the nannies are prejudiced even against others in their own community. Brown gives a realistic picture of the loneliness and frustration of life in New York without papers and money. She also addresses how often it seems the nannies care more for the children than their parents.

The story stops and starts and has some slow points with the ending wrapping up very quickly while still leaving threads hanging. Overall, it’s an interesting story, but I think Brown’s memoir might have been the stronger story rather than a fictionalized version.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Voice (April 12, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Victoria Brown
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Other “nanny” stories: The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus My Hollywood by Mona Simpson

Bibliography:

• Minding Ben (April 2011)

“In the jungle, beneath the thick dome of trees, it grew dark early, and the dawn light came late through the dense fog tangled in the ferns. The day was growing short for Valmorain, who was in a hurry, but eternal for the rest. The only food for the slaves was dried meat with a maize or sweet potato soup and a cup of coffee, handed out at night after they camped. The master had ordered a cube of sugar and a jot of taffia – the cane liquor of the poor – to be added to the coffee to warm those who were sleeping piled together on the ground and soaked with rain and dew, exposed to the devastation of an attack of fever. That year epidemics had been calamitous on the plantation; they’d had to replace many slaves, and none of the newborn had survived. Cambray warned his employer that the liquor and sugar would corrupt the slaves, and later there would be no way to keep them from sucking the cane. There was a special punishment for that infraction, but Valmorain was not given to complicated torture, except for runaways, in which case he followed the Code Noir to the letter. The execution of Maroons in Le Cap seemed to him a waste of time and money; it would have been enough to hang them without all the fuss.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (AUG 13, 2010)

The mulatto slave Zarité, known as Tété, and her owner, the French planter Toulouse Valmorain form the center of Allende’s novel  about slavery and the slave revolt that freed Haiti.

Valmorain came to the island at the age of 20, a rich noble anxious for a quick return to Paris. But the death of his father and the disarray of his sugar plantation make escape impossible, so Valmorain throws himself into making the property a success. His right hand man in this is the brutal overseer Prosper Cambray, feared by all.

Cambray lusts after Tété, Valmorain’s wife’s maid and soon, as the wife descends more deeply into madness, Valmorain’s mistress and primary caretaker of his son. Tété’s own son with Valmorain has been taken from her, she knows not where, and her lover, a young, proud African, runs off to join the rebels.

The first half centers on the brief, degraded lives of slaves on the island and the build-up to the slave revolt. Allende fills in a lot of political and emotional detail: the French Revolution so far away, the failed slave revolts of the past, the fears of the vastly outnumbered whites.

The second half takes Tété and Valmorain to Cuba, then New Orleans, as they flee Toussaint L’Ouverture’s rebellion. Allende’s historical focus is masterful, from the economic and intellectual views on slavery and slaves by landowners, to the remnants of African culture – like voodoo – that the slaves clung to.

The brutality is mindboggling, of course, and Allende goes into it in great detail. It’s detail, actually, which makes this less than her best. So determined is she to get across the despicable history of slavery, she loses the individuals among the archetypes. She depicts Valmorain as a fairly liberal planter, although he rapes Tété at age 11 and considers her incapable of deep emotion. He is simply a man of his times and culture.

Tété is more complex, but still rather flat. The real life of the novel is slavery itself – the enormity of it as a force for evil. Allende successfully shows how slavery corrupted the thinking of whites and debased their values, how it changed the course of history in so many ways, seeped into the very fabric of the culture and how its legacy follows us still.

Allende’s research is formidable and her passion infectious. Anyone interested in the birth of Haiti or the coming-of-age of New Orleans should enjoy Allende’s thorough exploration.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 60 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper; 1 edition (April 27, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Isabel Allende
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Zorro House of Spirits

Bibliography:

• The House of Spirits (1985)
• Of Love and Shadows (1987)
• Eva Luna (1988)
• The Stories of Eva Luna (collected) (1992)
• The Infinite Plan (1993)
• Paula (1995)
• Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1998)
• Daugher of Fortune: A Novel (1999)
• Portrait in Sepia (001)
• Zorro (2005)
• Ines of My Soul (2006)
• The Island Beneath the Sea (2010)
• Maya’s Notebook (April 2013)
• Ripper (January 2014)

Other:

• Mi Pais Inventado: Un Paseo Nostalgico Per Chile (2003) (Spanish)
• My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey through Chile (2003)

Young Adult:

• City of Beasts (2002)
• Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (2004)
• Forest of the Pygmies (2005)

Related Books:

• Conversations with Isabel Allende (1999)

E-Book Study Guide:

• Study Guide for HOUSE OF SPIRITS (2002)
• Study Guide for DAUGHTER OF FORTUNE (2003)

Movies from books:

• Of Love and Shadows (1994)
• The House of Spirits (1994)

And at that moment Lazue shouted, “Sail ho!”

Straining his eye to the glass, Hunter saw square canvas directly astern, coming above the line of the horizon. He turned back to Enders, but the sea artist was already making orders to run out all the canvas El Trinidad possessed. The topgallants were unreefed; the foresprit was run up, and the galleon gathered speed.

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (JAN 9, 2010)

Pure fun, Crichton’s posthumous pirate novel swashbuckles from dastardly deed to deadly danger and, just when all is lost, cobbles together ingenuity and luck to sail another day of derring-do.

It’s 1665 on the remote British colony of Jamaica where “privateers” keep the economy humming. News arrives of an especially rich Spanish prize anchored in the harbor of an island fortress, an impenetrable place bristling with cliffs, swamps and jungles and crawling with Spanish soldiers.

The previous year an assault on the island took the lives of the entire 300-man force, save one. That one, Whisper, his voice lost to a Spanish cutlass, is a broken man. But not even Whisper’s catalogue of deadly obstacles can deter our handsome hero, Capt. Charles Hunter, who mulls the information and assembles a crew of talented cutthroats.

Among them is the crafty Frenchman Sanson, “the most ruthless killer in all the Caribbean;” Basso, the tongueless “Moor,” a giant of a man who makes a living being underestimated; Lazue, a lithe, eagle-eyed woman who lives as a man but bares her breasts in battle to disorient the enemy; Don Diego the Jew, whose talent with explosives is beyond genius (encompassing a special invention involving the fresh intestines of rats), and Mr. Enders, the “sea artist” and surgeon whose skill as a helmsman is legendary.

Needless to say, none of these talents will go to waste as Hunter braves every peril land, sea and foe can throw up against him in a page-turner that never flags.

Soon to be a Spielberg movie, if rumor has it right, this one features no complicated characters or deep moments (unless sea monsters count?), just (fake) blood-soaked escapist fun.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 379 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (November 24, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Crichton
EXTRAS:	Audio Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:NEXT State of Fear Prey Airframe

Bibliography:

• The Andromeda Strain (1969)
• The Terminal Man (1972)
• The Great Train Robbery (1975)
• Eaters of the Dead (1976) (also called The 13th Warrior)
• Congo (1980)
• Sphere (1987)
• Jurassic Park (1990)
• Rising Sun (1992)
• Disclosure (1994)
• The Lost World (1995)
• Airframe (1996)
• Timeline (November 1999)
• PREY (November 2002)
• State of Fear (December 2004)
• NEXT (November 2006)
• Pirate Latitudes (November 2009)
• Micro (November 2011)

Published as Jeffrey Hudson:

• A Case of Need (1968)

Non-fiction:

• Travels (1998)

Movies from books:

• The Andromeda Strain (1971)
• The Terminal Man (1974)
• The Great Train Robbery (1979)
• Disclosure (1994)
• Jurassic Park (1993)
• Rising Sun (1993)
• Congo (1995)
• Sphere (1998)
• The 13th Warrior (2000)
• Timeline (April 2004)

“I should have told you that a long time ago.” Her mother rests her back against the pillows. “I should have told you how beautiful you are,” she says softly.

When Anna was fifteen, the brother of one of her friends from school held her hand and said, “You are the prettiest of my sister’s friends.” She felt a surge of irrational happiness then. This is the feeling Anna finally recognizes in the confusion of emotions that swirl through her. Will they talk now? Will they have closure?

But the timbre of her mother’s voice changes, the softness that was there evaporates. “I’m sure I didn’t need to tell you that,” she says. No emotion, a chastisement even.

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes ( NOV 14, 2009)

SPECIAL:  MF Author Interview

Anna In-Between is a novel about an unmarried, Caribbean woman in her late thirties, Anna Sinclair, who begins to understand herself as she comes to understand her parents. The novel explores issues of caste, race and culture in a moving, deeply poignant tale of mother and daughter. Anna goes back to the island of her birth as she does every year, but this time she stays for a month to spend more time with her aging parents. Her mother, Beatrice, reveals to Anna that she has a lump on her breast – one for which she has not sought treatment. Beatrice has not even mentioned it to her own husband, though she knows he sees it. And he doesn’t say a word about it, either. He respects her privacy. The whole “elephant in the living room” thing is hard for a modern American to comprehend, especially when we’re talking – or not talking about – a life-threatening disease.

Anna grew up in an upper-class neighborhood among Englishmen who didn’t accept her because of her black skin. In New York, she doesn’t quite belong either, being from a very different culture and lineage than most Afro-Americans, with her Amerindian, European, African, Indian and Chinese blood. And the influences of the New York culture over time make her feel even more alien when she goes home to the Caribbean to visit.

Beatrice fights against social mores and long-held Victorian tradition in order to accept help for her cancer. Still, she can’t bring herself to travel to the States to better medical facilities and doctors because  blacks are still second class citizens there.

Anna’s insecurities come through as she analyzes her mother’s every word and gesture for hidden meaning. And hidden meanings abound, but are not outnumbered by her mother’s overt manipulations and judgments. Anna’s extremely convincing inner dialog felt like something beyond truth, more raw and intimate.

Nunez draws on her recollections and experiences from growing up in Trinidad to weave a sensual sense of place throughout the novel. When I read Daphne DuMaurier, I wanted to go to Cornwall, when I read Eugenia Price’s St. Simons Trilogy I wanted to visit St. Simons, Georgia. Now Nunez has infused me with longing to see the Caribbean and get to know its people that have such a rich and tumultuous history.

I highly recommend Anna In-Between, especially to women, because Nunez captures the mother-daughter dynamic so well. And to anyone who struggles with finding where they belong.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Akashic Books (September 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AMAZON PAGE:	Anna In-Between
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Allbc page on Elizabeth Nunez Akashic Books page on Anna In-Between
EXTRAS:	MostlyFiction.com interview with Elizabeth Nunez
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Caribbean authors:Edwidge Danticat Nalo Hopkinson Donna Hemans Jamaica Kincaid

Bibliography:

• Beyond the Limbo Silence 1998)
• Bruised Hisbiscus (2000)
• Discretion (2002)
• Grace (2003)
• Prospero’s Daughter (2006)
• Anna In-Between (September 2009)

Other:

• Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad (2005)

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