Book Review: A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards

Title: A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards
Published July 31, 2012; Amistad; Paperback
Genre: British fiction, contemporary fiction

About: A British-born woman, daughter of an immigrant mother from Montserrat, the West Indies, lives with the idea that she caused her mother's death years ago, and begins to discover the more complex truth when the two men in her mother's life resurface after a 14-year absence.

Comments: The coats referred to in the title play an important part in the story of Jinx's relationship with her mother. The story unravels slowly, with numerous flashbacks to the time when Jinx was a teenager, when her mother was alive and visited by the two men - her mother's volatile abusive lover Berris and a family friend, Lemon. The mother-daughter relationship as perceived by Jinx is the crux of this story.

Well written and with an easy pace, I enjoyed this novel as a welcome addition to emerging British immigrant fiction and Caribbean fiction.

Yvvette Edwards has lived in London all her life. She currently resides in the East End and is married with three children. A Cupboard Full of Coats, her first novel, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.  It is also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and was named a Kirkus Best Book of the Year.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for a review copy of this book.

For more reviews of A Cupboard Full of Coats, visit the book's tour schedule.
(Submitted for  Immigrant Stories 2012 Challenge).