Customer Reviews

Soucouyant

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Poetic. You not only feel for the characters, you feel for an entire family, a community, a nation, a race and a gender. What makes good truly good? What makes evil? I recommend this to anyone.

EGADS! Shapechanging voodoo hags and poet-professor sons -- immigrant songs of the Caribbean cross-faded with academic viewpoints and Vancouver Lululemon clothes (would you like soy or seaweed underwear?) -- Chariandy must be the most complete package of postcolonial memoir-fiction-manifesto going! Wow! I've never seen such an ensemble performance that hits all the right buttons. I'm so pleased to hear that it's acceptable again to describe the rum soaked coasts of Trinidad in terms of archaic superstitions, transformed by a Canadian ID card. Shiver me timbers and can(n)on balls across the treasure chest map of house, home and political prose! Sand, sun, sangria, and santeria! Trinidad! Tenure, trophies, theses, and transnationalism! The best of both worlds! At least our poet-professor hero didn't get tasered. The accent changes but the old hearth does not! A tour-de-force from the hefty genre of cross-cultural place changing. Expect a sequel! Many of them! All very readable and cultural. Guaranteed to cure guilt ridden liberals. Expect multiple award nominations! Homey Barbapapa! Ahoy and hoorah!

I decided to read this book after it was nominated for a Canadian fiction award. I read the book - cover to cover - and was left scratching my head as to why this book was even nominated in the first place.

Yes the novel covers those things which some would deep worthy topics - dementia, new immigrants to Canada, racism - but the story itself is not all that great. At the end of the novel I was left scratching my head, wondering why I read this book in the first place. There was no "wow, that was a good use of my time" kind of feeling. And which so many new and good books out there, I kind of wish I hadn't wasted my time on this book.

For the un-initiated, the book deals with a son who returns home to learn that his mother is suffering from severe dementia and how he copes with it. The story serves as a launching pad for the author to talk about immigration issues and how Canadians reacted to new comers to the country.

My advice; skip this novel. There are plenty of other good Canadian books out there.