Multiple award-winning author Nalo Hopkinson delivers a triumphant novel in the bestselling tradition of such literary greats as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. When three Caribbean slave women gather one night to bury a stillborn baby, their collected mournings braid into a powerful calling, and a deity is born. So begins the epic journey of a spirit who, in a desperate bid to discover her own nature and identity, defies the limitations of time and place to inhabit the minds of living women throughout history. From Jeanne Duval, the seductive black mistress of 19th-century bohemian poet Charles Baudelaire, to a Nubian prostitute on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 300 A.D., the spirit gathers the power and the wisdom of the ages, only to come full circle on the island of St. Domingue. There, she is reunited with the very women who gave her life, and who still struggle to survive under the tyranny of brutal masters.
The Salt Roads
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Nalo Hopkinson has been challenging readers and changing the face of science fiction since her critically acclaimed first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring. With her fourth book, The Salt Roads, Hopkinson transcends all categories of genre and establishes herself fully as a literary master. The Salt Roads is an epic tale of hardship and struggle that spans the lives of three black women in radically different historical circumstances: Mer, a slave woman living on a brutal plantation on Haiti; Jeanne Duval, a poor dancer who has a lifelong affair with poet Charles Baudelaire; and Meritet, a Nubian prostitute who becomes St. Mary of Egypt. The individual tales of the women are bound together by Ezili, a goddess who inhabits each of their minds in a quest for self-identity.
The Salt Roads contains strong elements of fantasy--a shapeshifter plays a prominent role in one of the storylines, and there are elements of magic throughout--but this is really a book about history and the inherited narratives of the past. Hopkinson's characters provide new perspectives on a wide range of these narratives, from biblical stories to the mythology surrounding Baudelaire and his poetry. As the three women struggle to escape lives of subjugation and humiliation, The Salt Roads undermines any notion of identity politics, its characters shifting and sliding through the boundaries of race, gender, sex, and social class, and in the process revealing the underlying instability of much of the foundations of Western culture. The Salt Roads is a multi-layered and poignant journey through our past, one that moves through suffering, loss, and longing but never loses hope. Hopkinson may offer a vision of torment and injustice, but she also presents a dream of liberty from the chains of history itself. --Peter Darbyshire
From Publishers Weekly
Whirling with witchcraft and sensuality, this latest novel by Hopkinson (Skin Folk; Midnight Robber) is a globe-spanning, time-traveling spiritual odyssey. When three Caribbean slave women, led by dignified doctress Mer, assemble to bury a stillborn baby on the island of Saint Domingue (just before it is renamed Haiti in 1804), Ezili, the Afro-Caribbean goddess of love and sex, is called up by their prayers and lamentations. Drawing from the deceased infant's "unused vitality," Ezili inhabits the bodies of a number of women who, despite their remoteness from each other in time and space, are bound to each other by salt-be it the salt of tears or the salt that baptized slaves into an alien religion. The goddess's most frequent vehicle is Jeanne Duval, a 19th-century mulatto French entertainer who has a long-running affair with bohemian poet Charles Baudelaire. There is also fourth-century Nubian prostitute Meritet, who leaves a house of ill repute to follow a horde of sailors, but finds religion and a call to sainthood. Meanwhile, the seed of revolution is planted in Saint Domingue as the slaves hatch a plan to bring down their white masters. Ezili yearns to break free from Jeanne's body to act elsewhere, but can do so only when Jeanne, now infected with syphilis, is deep in dreams. Fearing that she will disappear when death finally calls Jeanne, Ezili is drawn into the body of Mer at a cataclysmic moment and is just as quickly tossed back into other narratives. Though occasionally overwrought, the novel has a genuine vitality and generosity. Epic and frenetic, it traces the physical and spiritual ties that bind its characters to each other and to the earth.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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It went in white, but it will come out a mulatto in a few months' time, yes?" Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
It went in white, but it will come out a mulatto in a few months' time, yes?" Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Format:Hardcover
There are four main characters in THE SALT ROADS, a novel of magic realism. Nalo Hopkinson uses a broken narrative approach to tell their stories, which some readers may find hard to follow.
Mer is a healer woman held in slavery on a plantation in late 18th century Saint Domingue, which will someday become Haiti. Jeanne Duval is a dancer and mistress to the writer/critic Charles Beaudelaire in mid-19th France. Thais is half Nubian/half Greek dancing girl/prostitute in late 4th century Alexandria, Egypt; she gives rise to the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt.
The fourth character connects the other three together. She is Ezili, the Afro-Caribbean lwa/ancestor spirit/goddess. Ezili has many aspects, but is commonly thought of as the mother ocean goddess and the names and nicknames of the characters reflect this: Mer (sea in French), lemer, Meritat (Thais's Egyptian name given to her by her friend Neferkare). Unbeknownst to the three women, Ezili rides them, that is, she possesses them for reasons that even Ezili doesn't understand. At first, the reader, like the characters doesn't know what is going on, but as the book progresses it becomes clearer.
This is a novel of sorrow and celebration, of bondage and liberation, of strength and perseverance. Ezili's siren song sounds both strange and powerful to my ears.
Mer is a healer woman held in slavery on a plantation in late 18th century Saint Domingue, which will someday become Haiti. Jeanne Duval is a dancer and mistress to the writer/critic Charles Beaudelaire in mid-19th France. Thais is half Nubian/half Greek dancing girl/prostitute in late 4th century Alexandria, Egypt; she gives rise to the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt.
The fourth character connects the other three together. She is Ezili, the Afro-Caribbean lwa/ancestor spirit/goddess. Ezili has many aspects, but is commonly thought of as the mother ocean goddess and the names and nicknames of the characters reflect this: Mer (sea in French), lemer, Meritat (Thais's Egyptian name given to her by her friend Neferkare). Unbeknownst to the three women, Ezili rides them, that is, she possesses them for reasons that even Ezili doesn't understand. At first, the reader, like the characters doesn't know what is going on, but as the book progresses it becomes clearer.
This is a novel of sorrow and celebration, of bondage and liberation, of strength and perseverance. Ezili's siren song sounds both strange and powerful to my ears.
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
This "Salt Roads" of this historical/magical realist novel are the trails of sweat, tears, and blood that course through women's lives. Separate narratives intertwine here, each wrought with the precision and lyricism of a short story, but together they produce a true novel of compelling scope. The settings range from Baudelaire's Paris to the cane fields of French-ruled Haiti, from early Christian Alexandria to the present day. The threads of slavery, childbirth, love affairs, and accidental sainthood are by turns comic, angry, and earthily sensual.
Rich with historical detail and human intimacies, the book sometimes pulls back to a goddess-like view, contemplating the slow changes that have transformed women's lives over the centuries--but never losing its light, witty touch. In short, a very big novel with many finely crafted and exquisite parts.
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Complicated, sexy, rewarding. This is a book that stays with you long after you've finished it. This book is so rich! Weaving three different stories together, you'll never tire of any of the point of view characters, but be left wanting more. I wish Salt Roads was twice the length! I wanted to know what happened *after* the revolution. Sequel, please.
Nothing Hopkinson has written disappoints. I just wish she wrote faster and edited less. I want a new book every six months!
Nothing in this book is deliberately shocking or voyeuristic. Hopkinson simply tells it like it is. The people who call it shocking are saying more about their own limited horizons than this marvellous book.
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4.4 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Couldn't follow along!
I tried very hard to "get into" this book... but I could no longer force myself after about 150 pages. Read more
Published on Mar 15 2004 by Inga Magi
1.0 out of 5 stars
Totally overwrought and over the top
From the initial scenes of lesbian sex, and telling one's fortune by peering into a chamberpot full of urine and a bloody tampon, this book tries to shock rather than say anything... Read more
Published on Jan 26 2004 by J. Mullally
4.0 out of 5 stars
The heritage of women
In this mythic fantasy, Nalo Hopkinson braids together the lives of three distinct African women into a potent and sensual feminist vision. Read more
Published on Jan 21 2004 by "blissengine"
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful
I love this author! If you want to read something fresh and new, you must read her. Also, try her first two books: "Brown Girl in the Ring" and "Midnight... Read more
Published on Jan 16 2004
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lover, virgin, mother
THE SALT ROADS is an engrossing tale of three women who step off of the pages and sit with you as you revel in their triumphs and tremble at their tribulations. Read more
Published on Dec 5 2003 by The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
4.0 out of 5 stars
The evolution of a goddess
This fabulist tale begins on the island of Saint Domingue, eventually known as Haiti, the scene of slave revolutions and oppressive masters. Read more
Published on Nov 20 2003 by Luan Gaines
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting....
Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads centers on the spirit, Ezili's (a goddess of love and seduction) emergence in three women throughout time. Read more
Published on Nov 16 2003 by Phyllis Rhodes
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE SALT ROADS by Nalo Hopkinson
This lyrical, yet sexy novel might well be the breakout book for Nalo Hopkinson. Published almost at the same time as the highly anticipated new novel by Toni Morrison, Hopkinson... Read more
Published on Nov 11 2003
5.0 out of 5 stars
fabulous look at Afro-Caribbean mythos
Early in the nineteenth century, on the French colonial Caribbean Island of Saint Domingue, three female slave women, led by Doctress Mer, inter a stillborn baby. Read more
Published on Nov 11 2003 by Harriet Klausner
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