COMING OF AGE WITH COOKING: Colorful Palete by Raj Tawney and Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson

Happy Thanksgiving coming up, everyone! Enjoy!  Here are two books about the love of cooking and baking

Colorful Palate: A Flavorful Journey Through a Mixed American Experience by Raj Tawney

Published October 3, 2023; Empire State Editions 

I loved reading about the author's growing up in the Bronx with the influence of his Puerto Rican grandmother and her tasty dishes that include an Italian recipe or two. His love of cooking multiple types of food also came from his PuertoRican-Italian mother who cooked Indian dishes at home for the family and his Indian father.

It was interesting to see how a family with three different cultural influences brought up the sons - the author and his older brother, who nevertheless grew up going their own way to develop their own American identities. The coming of age memoir is a cheerful one, with happy overtones in spite of his parents' alienation from each other. I find it notable that the couple were estranged but continued to live in the same home.

The recipes included in the book are mostly Indian recipes, delicious sounding but requiring many steps and varieties of ingredients and spices. I liked the simple Italian recipe of spaghetti and meatballs that his grandmother used to prepare.

I enjoyed reading this well written, easy to read book and would recommend it to foodies and those interested in the dynamics of multicultural families.

 Sweetness in the Skin: a Novel by Ishi Robinson

Publication: April 23, 2024; Harper

Genre: coming of age, multicultural, food, baking

I was happy to find this ARC of a coming of age book set in Jamaica, about a young girl with the ability to bake the delicious Jamaican pastries, cakes, and snacks that I remember enjoying when I was growing up on the island.

I am in the middle of reading the novel, eager to see how the 13-year-old girl living in relative poverty with a largely absent and hostile mother, how she will escape through her baking skills, and realize her dream of being with her aunt in France. It sounds far fetched, but so far, Pumkin seems to be handling obstacles, one by one, and getting closer to her dream.

Publisher description: 

 A winning debut novel about a young teenage girl in Jamaica determined to bake her way out of her dysfunctional family and into the opportunity of a lifetime. Pumkin Patterson is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a tiny two-room house in Kingston, Jamaica, with her grandmother, her Aunt Sophie (who dreams of a new life in Paris for her and Pumkin), and her distant, hostile mother Paulette (who’s rarely home).

What's on your reading schedule this week and/or the rest of the month?inly202

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday.

The Which of Shakespeare's Why by Leigh Light: Sunday Salon

After last week's Sunday post, I've been rereading the three books I featured there by Michel Bussi, French thriller writer, and have neglected all my TBRs. I'm almost finished (good reading all over again), and have to decide my next read. 

I've been ignoring the library as I have a stuffed Kindle, full of the ARCs I have to read. 

 In the meantime, a more literary novel came in the mail yesterday: 

The Which of Shakespeare's Why: A Novel of the Authorship Mystery Near Solution Today, by Leigh Light, publication September 19, 2023, City Point Press. 

The book dallies with the age old premise that the real Shakespeare could have been Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an Elizabethan peer and courtier  (1550-1604)

Publisher:

 The controversy over who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays has been around almost since they were written. Was the genius behind the plays really that obscure glover’s son from Stratford? Or was it someone else entirely—a man whose class, background, education, and peculiarities make him a more than plausible candidate?
 
In The Which of Shakespeare’s Why, a 21st-century playwright named Harry Haines makes the case for a major contender via a play he himself is writing for a struggling New Jersey theatre company. Faced with strong disapproval from the “Stratfordites” and with the backing of supporters that sometimes takes some unusual forms, Harry attempts, against great odds, to get the play written and staged.

In the process he has to overcome his own doubts, stay on the right side of the right people, keep his romantic life under control, and deal with not only a difficult actress or two but a flock of opinionated Rockettes. Part hilarious farce, part serious critical examination, The Which of Shakespeare’s Why provides a thought-provoking look at a controversial puzzle with a surprising, ingenious, and wholly satisfying ending that Shakespeare—whoever he was—would have given a standing ovation.

Would you pick up this new novel about the Shakespeare controversy? 

Thanks to Wiley Sachek Publicity for a review/feature copy of this  intriguing book. 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Rosie Colored Glasses by Brianna Wolfson: Book Beginning

Fiction: Rosie Colored Glasses by Brianna Wolfson, June 11, 2019, MIRA

Rosie Colored Glasses by Brianna Wolfson is a novel about young Willow, caught between the different worlds of her divorced parents, Rosie and Rex. According to the reviews, this is not a light read, as the description might suggest, but a semi-autobiographical novel about family dysfunction.

Book beginning:

PROLOGUE
Willow Thorpe knew friction. The heat it created when one thing rubbed against another. When one world rubbed against another.

Willow felt it every time she got into the back seat of her mother's car, buckled her seat belt, grabbed her brother's hand and prepared to return to her father's house. Every time she stared out the window of her mother's car and traced the familiar turns of the street on the way to her father's. Every time her father opened the big heavy front door and mumbled, "Late again, Rosie." Every time her mother casually responded with a smirk and a "Catch you later, Rex." 

 Page 56:

She guided Asher quickly down the aisles by his hand as Willow jogged and stumbled behind them. And then Rosie stopped in front of a giant wall of every color paint in every size bucket. 

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

After Dark by Haruki Murakami: Book Review Revisited

Book Review: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

After Dark

Title: After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Paperback: 256 pages; Kindle; Audiobook
Publisher: May 2007

Haruki Murakami's latest novel, After Dark, begins just before midnight in Tokyo and ends just before 7 a.m. The focus is Tokyo in the dead of night, after the trains have stopped running and the only public transportation out of the city is by cab.

Some of the people left in the city are college students and office workers. They are in the bars, hanging out in all night restaurants, in game parlors, or working late in the office.

The book follows a young college student, Mari, who decides to stay reading in a Denny's restaurant rather than go home. She meets another college student there, a musician who is in the city to practice with his band. At his suggestion, Mari leaves the restaurant to help a foreign woman who has been injured, and in the course of events, comes across unusual situations and makes some unlikely friends, including the manager and maid of an all night hotel. Long conversations during the night with the musician, who has met her older sister, help her come to terms with the reason she has avoided going home.

When morning arrives and the trains are running, Mari goes home to the suburbs, where she knows she will find her older sister, Eri Asai, still in a deep sleep. A beautiful and well-known model, Eri Asai has been sleeping steadily the past three weeks, getting up occasionally to eat, though no one has seen her when she is up.

Remembering how protective Eri Asai had been of her when they had been trapped in an elevator as children, Mari tries to empathize with her sister, in tears hugging her as if willing her to wake up out of her long dream. There is a glimmer of a response. Mari finally goes to sleep.

The novel only hints at the reason for Eri Asi's withdrawal. There is a suggestion that it involves the sinister office worker Shirakawa, whom Mari is unaware of though their paths overlap during the night in the city.

The novel has many levels of meaning. Murakami reveals the flip side of the city, after dark, at times with humor. The city at night also reveals the dark aspect of some of the characters he explores. Mari and the musician walk about the city and among these people but remain unscathed.

Submitted for the Lost in Translation Reading Challenge. and resubmitted for the 2012 Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge.

© Harvee Lau of Book Dilettante.

Book Beginning: The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet

The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet, August 14, 2018, Picador USA

Genre: comedy, literary fiction
Source: library
Book beginning:

Life is not a novel. At least you would like to believe so. Roland Barthes walks up Rue de Bievre. The greatest literary critic of the twentieth century has every reason to feel anxious and upset. His mother, with whom he had a highly Proustian relationship, is dead. And his course on "The Preparation of the Novel"  at the College de France is such a conspicuous failure it can no longer be ignored; all year he has talked to his students about Japanese haikus, photography, the signifier and the signified, Pascalian diversions, cafe waiters, dressing gowns, and lecture-hall seating - about everything but the novel. And this has been going on for three years. He knows, of course, that the course is simply a delaying tactic designed to push back the moment when he must start a truly literary work....

Page 56:

Standing behind his massive desk, Giscard points to one representing a beautiful, severe-looking woman, arms outspread, dressed in a fine white dress....

Publisher: 

Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes dies—struck by a laundry van. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn’t an accident at all? What if Barthes was . . . murdered? The hapless police detective Jacques Bayard, whose new case will plunge him into the depths of literary theory, soon finds himself in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious “seventh function of language.”

What new books are you reading this weekend? 
Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

First Chapter: Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato

Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato, March 7, 2017, St. Martin's Press

"...a stunning examination of family love and betrayal. 

Eight-year-old Edgar Fini remembers nothing of the accident people still whisper about. He only knows that his father is gone, his mother has a limp, and his grandmother believes in ghosts ."

First chapter:

Chanel No. 5

Having a life meant having a story. Even at eight, Edgar knew this.

What he didn't know was his own beginning. Newborn brains were mushy. If you wanted to know how your life had started, you had to get this information from other people. 

But what if these people were liars?  

"I kept falling asleep," said Lucy. She was speaking of Edgar's birth. The boy liked this particular story, and so he made sure to roll his head in feigned boredom....

Review: "Wonder-filled and magisterial...Lodato's skill as a poet manifests itself on every page, delighting with such elegant similes and incisive descriptions…His skill as a playwright shines in every piece of dialogue…And his skill as a fiction writer displays itself in his virtuoso command of point of view. The book pushes the boundaries of beauty." - Chicago Tribune

Based on the opening of the book and the book description, would you continue reading? 

MEME: Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon

First Chapter: Inheritance from Mother by Minae Mizumura

Inheritance from Mother by Minae Mizumura, May 2, 2017, Other Press

Genre: serialized novel, 2011-2012; translated from the Japanese

Source: library

First chapter:

The Long Telephone Call in Lieu of a Wake

"So how much do we get back from Golden?" 

Before answering, Mitsuki, on the phone with her sister Natsuki glanced once again at the numbers. At this late-fall night the window by the desk was closed, but instinctively she lowered her voice in reply. "Around seventeen million yen."  

"What?" said Natsuki. "You mean they keep a whole ten million even though she was there such a short time?""Looks like it." 

Golden was the private, exclusive nursing home where their mother had been living. Its full name was Golden Years, but everyone always called it Golden....

Book description:

Minae Mizumura demystifies the notion of the selfless Japanese mother and the adult daughter honor-bound to care for her. In addition to her husband’s infidelity, Mitsuki must deal with her ailing eighty-something mother, a demanding, self-absorbed woman who is far from the image of the patient, self-sacrificing Japanese matriarch.

Inheritance from Mother not only offers insight into a complex and paradoxical culture, but is also a profound work about mothers and daughters, marriage, old age, and the resilience of women. (publisher)

Based on the first chapter, first paragraph,  and the description, would you continue reading? 

MEME: Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon.

First Chapter: The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

Psychological thriller: The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine, October 17, 2017, HarperLuxe

The Last Mrs. Parrish 

A debut psychological thriller full of twists about a coolly manipulative woman who worms her way into the lives of a wealthy “golden couple” from Connecticut to achieve the privileged life she wants. (publisher)

First chapter:

Amber Patterson was tired of being invisible. She'd been coming in this gym every day for three months - three long months of watching these women of leisure working at the only thing they cared about. They were all self-absorbed; she would have bet her last dollar that not one of them would recognize her on the street even though she was five feet away from them every single day. She was a fixture to them - unimportant, not worthy of being noticed. But she didn't care - not about any of them. There was one reason and one reason alone that she dragged herself there every day, to this machine, at the precise stroke of eight. 

Would you continue reading based on the first paragraph and the book description?

MEME: Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon.

First Chapter: Pupcakes by Annie England Noblin

Pupcakes: A Christmas Novel by Annie England Noblin, October 10, 2017, courtesy of William Morrow
Genre: romance, Christmas story
This is a novel of one woman starting over, who is adopted by an aging pug named Teddy Roosevelt, and continues when Brydie uses her baking skills to open a bakery named after its mascot - Pupcakes. 

First paragraph, first chapter:

The dog came with the house. Or maybe the house came with the dog. Either way, no matter how the sentence was constructed, the house and the dog came together.
Brydie Benson looked down at the at the fat wad of fur on the floor in front of her. Its tongue hung out of its mouth, fixed in what seemed to be a permanent pant. Bits of drool dripped from the protruding tongue and pooled onto the hardwood floor between them. 
Brydie took a step back. "Are you sure it can't go live with a relative or something?" she asked. "I'm not really a dog person." (from an uncorrected proof; final copy may differ)

Would you read on based on the beginning and the book description? 

MEME: Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon.

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa: Book Beginning/Review

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, translated from the Japanese, November 14, 2017, courtesy of OneWorld Publication
Genre: novel translated from the Japanese
Paperback, 224 pages

Book beginning:

A sweetly scented breeze blew along Cherry Blossom Street.

Sentaro stood over a hot griddle inside the Doraharu shop, as he did all day everyday, cooking pancakes or his dorayaki. Cherry Blossom Street was a run-down commercial strip in a depressed part of town, a street more notable for empty shops than the cherry trees planted sparsely on either side. Today, however, perhaps because the flowers were in full bloom, there were more people about than usual. 

Sentaro looked up to see an elderly lady in a white hat standing on the roadside, but immediately turned back to the bowl of batter he was mixing. He assumed she was looking at the billowing could of cherry blossom on the tree outside the shop.

Page 56:

"What kind of food do you like to eat, boss? What's the local specialty in Takasaki?"

I saw the movie based on this book on Netflix and really liked the story of a down-and-out, handicapped older woman who is given a job making dorayaki, a sweet pastry of pancakes filled with bean paste. She helps the struggling owner of the failing shop to attract buyers with her delicious recipe and cooking. But she hides a secret that will be a huge problem for her and for the shop owner, Sentaro, as time goes by.

The characters and plot are heartwarming and unexpected. A very enjoyable novel.

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan

Rich People Problems: A Novel by Kevin Kwan, May 23, 2017, Doubleday
Source: library ebook
Rating: 4.5

I read the first two books, Crazy Rich Asians and China Rich Girlfriend, both stand alone novels though the stories follow basically the same people. Crazy Rich Asians is being made into a major film.

Rich People Problems takes up where the two previous books left off, and follow the Youngs, the Leongs, the Shangs, the Wus, the Bings, and other super rich families of Southeast Asia, Hong Kong,  and China. I read it as satire, though I wonder how much of the super wealthy lifestyles are true - the mansions they live in all over the world, the private planes and shopping trips to Paris and London, the lavish lifestyle, which includes superb Chinese food!, and the other uber wealthy people they socialize with.

The super wealthy from the countries of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, China, the Philippines are portrayed in these novels, and famous name clothing designers, architects, and real titled people appear in this fictional setting.

In this third book, Rich People Problems, relatives scramble to inherit the fortune and home of a wealthy Singapore Chinese matriarch who is on her deathbed. Her will gives some surprises.

This was a fun read, but just how much is pure satire and how much borders on truth? The author was born in Singapore. I guess he writes about the people and places he is familiar with.
He now lives in Manhattan.

Book Beginning: Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato

Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato, published March 7, 2017, St. Martin's Press

"...a stunning examination of family love and betrayal. Eight-year-old Edgar Fini remembers nothing of the accident people still whisper about. He only knows that his father is gone, his mother has a limp, and his grandmother believes in ghosts "

Book beginning:

Having a life meant having a story. Even at eight, Edgar knew this. 

What he didn't know was his own beginning. Newborn brains were mushy. If you wanted to know how your life had started, you had to get this information from other people.

But what if these people were liars?

"I kept falling asleep," said Lucy. She was speaking of Edgar's birth. The boy liked this particular story, and so he made sure to roll his head in feigned boredom.

Page 56:

Florence had dropped her watering can and nearly fallen into the tomatoes. She'd clutched her chest, fearing she might be dying. Just this morning she'd thought of her childhood friend - and now the spastic girl was chanting Nelly's name like a mob about to burn down a building. 

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Book Review: The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman

The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman, May 2, 2017, Berkley

Lil, widowed for three years with two young children, is a school text illustrator in Southern California. Her boss signs her up for a vegetable growing class at the Los Angeles Botanical Garden, to prep for the next project - illustrating a series of vegetable guides the company is planning.

Lil attends the six-week class, held on Saturdays and led by gardening professor Ed Bloem. She not only benefits from gardening and meeting new people, but sees the benefits to her sister and Lil's two young children who also participate in the class. 

Lil's sister-in-law Maggie arrives broken hearted by a cheating hubby and somehow the setting and the new arrangement in Lil's life help everyone around her. In the end, Lil finds a new occupation and new love, and a new acceptance of her widowhood.

I liked the story, as I love gardening, and found the vegetable growing tips in the book interesting and useful. Though parts of the plot are predictable, the reading is easy and pleasant, not only for readers who garden but anyone who like a good romance.

My rating: 4 stars

Book Beginning: The Widow of Wall Street by Randy Susan Meyers.

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Title: The Widow of Wall Street
Author: Randy Susan Meyers
Published: April 11, 2017, Atria Books
Genre: contemporary fiction
"... a woman struggles to redefine her life and marriage as everything she thought she knew crumbles around her."

Book beginning:

Phoebe
November 2009

Phoebe never hated her husband more than when she visited him in prison. The preceding nightmare of ordeals - eleven hours hauling a suitcase by bus, train, and cab, her muscles screaming from the weight - were the coming attractions of the misery she faced he next day. 

Page 57

"So did he tell you?"
"Did he tell me what?" Phoebe dipped into the pot and sampled a bit of sauce. Almost perfect. Velvet smooth.
"How he lost everyone's money?"

Book description: ... the seemingly blind love of a wife for her husband as he conquers Wall Street, and her extraordinary, perhaps foolish, loyalty during his precipitous fall.

I am eager to see how the wife is portrayed and if her seeming innocence of her husband's double life on Wall Street is believable or not. What did you think, if you have already read the book?  

First Chapter: Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramona Ausubel

Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramona Ausubel, June 14, 2016.
This book got mixed reviews, so I'm eager to see how I will like it! Another library book!

First chapter:
1976
Summer fattened everybody up. The family buttered without reserve; pie seemed to be everywhere. They awoke and slept and awoke in the summerhouse on the island, ate all their meals on the porch while the sun moved across the sky. They looked out at the saltwater cove and watched the sailboats skim and tack across the blue towards the windward beach, littered with the outgrown shells of horseshoe crabs. 

Picture the five of them, looking like a family. 

Book description:
"... an imaginative novel about a wealthy New England family in the 1960s and '70s that suddenly loses its fortune—and its bearings."

Would you read on?
MEME: Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon

Waiting on Wednesday: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted weekly by Jill at Breaking the Spine. What new releases or soon to be released books are you eagerly waiting for. 

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng will be published September 12, 2017, the author's second book since the acclaimed Everything I Never Told You.

Book description: In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town--and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides.  Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. 

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. (publisher)

Another Great Library Find: Big Breasts and Wide Hips by Mo Yan

I found an intriguing library book: a novel and an historical one at that.
Big Breasts and Wide Hips, a novel by Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan, author of Red Sorghum, published 2014.

Book description: This is a book about women but it's also a book about China, from the fall of the Qing dynasty up through the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the civil war, the Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao years. In sum, this stunning novel is Mo Yan's searing vision of 20th-century China.

In a country where men dominate, and as the title implies, the female body serves as the book's most important image and metaphor. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900. Married at 17 into the Shangguan family, she has nine children, only one of whom is a boy, the narrator of the book, a spoiled and ineffectual child who stands in stark contrast to his eight strong and forceful female siblings.

Mother, a survivor, is the quintessential strong woman, who risks her life to save the lives of several of her children and grandchildren. The writing is full of life-picturesque, bawdy, shocking, imaginative. (publisher)

The title and topics and history are inviting an exploration of Mo Yan's unique vision!

Mo Yan is a modern Chinese author, known for his novel Red Sorghum (which was turned into a movie by the same title). Often described as the Chinese Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.

First Chapter: The Last Treasure by Erika Marks

The Last Treasure by Erika Marks, August 2, 2016, is an adventure and romance novel about three college friends searching for a lost nineteenth century schooner along the Carolina Banks.

First chapter:
She descends through the mist, the weight of her tank rolling along her spine, the smooth motor of her fins cutting silently through the water.

She is looking for the wreck's debris field, the pieces of its battered puzzle emerging through the murky haze, and the clouds of sand and silt that have kept the ship's bones hidden for so long will part like smoke.

But something is wrong.

MEME: Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon. 

Book Review: Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Review of Here Comes the Sun, a novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn, published June 2, 2016, Norton

I didn't think I'd want to finish the book, but as I kept reading it pulled me in - the characters, the story, the writing. This is a candid look at some of the lives of the less fortunate local people who live behind the scenes in the Jamaican tourist industry, the ones who serve in the hotels and cater to the tourists, legally or not. It also looks at the island culture of homophobia, prejudice, superstition, and lack of opportunity and education that keep many miserable and hold them back. I didn't think I'd want to finish the book, but as I kept reading it pulled me in - the vivid characters, the story, the, at times, poetic writing. This is a candid look at some of the lives of the less fortunate local people who live behind the scenes in the Jamaican tourist industry, the ones who serve in the hotels and cater to the tourists, legally or not. It also looks at the island culture of homophobia, superstition, and lack of opportunity and education that keep many miserable and hold them back. You won't look at the local people the same way the next time you vacation in paradise! Written by a Jamaican-American who knows the island, the dialect, and its life rhythms. I recommend the book for all readers interested in the Caribbean.

First Chapter: Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon.

Today's book I got yesterday from the library after seeing it by chance. I'm really enjoying it, a book set in Jamaica, written by a Jamaican-American writer and teacher now living in Brooklyn.

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn, June 2, 2016, Norton
"Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect..." Margot works at a hotel in Montego Bay to support her mother Delores and her younger sister Thandi, whom she wants to further her education to lift herself out of relative poverty.

Margot herself is a clandestine member of the gay community and will probably have to leave the homophobic island culture at some time. As I read along, I'm waiting to see if this happens.

First paragraph:
The long hours Margot works at the hotel are never documented. Her real work is not in answering the telephones that ring off the hook, or writing up delinquent housekeepers for sleeping on the beds and watching TV when they're supposed to be cleaning. Her real work is after hours when everyone had bid their goodbyes and piled up in the white Corollas --robot taxis -- at the massive gate of the resort, which will take them home to their shabby neighborhoods, away from the fantasy they help create about a country where they are as important as washed-up seaweed.

What do you think? Would you read on?