1940s Trinidad is not a place I’ve journeyed before in books. It was a wild and haunting absorption for me, especially once the pilot light was lit and the plot got cooking. The class differences were stark and chilling; the bad taste of British colonialism suffuses and persists. In this group of well-wrought characters, we are introduced to the barrack of five poverty-stricken families. The barrack is a rotting and tilting fortification of wood and tin, one that leaks and fails to protect from any extreme temperatures. The cast is almost Dickensian in its specificity of traits, but more eerie in atmosphere. Grief is front and center right from the start, and when death came before the opening pages, it never really left. The presence of prologue remains, and shadows the lives of those who forebear. The wealthy couple in this story is also tormented. It is a violent place to inhabit within these pages, on this farm and barrack. Even the big house, with the monied Changoor couple, Dalton and Marlee, is haunted by a portrait. Dalton is a paranoid monomaniac and Marlee has a storied, secret past.
Down in the barrack, Shweta and her handsome husband, Hans Saroop, lost a baby daughter, Hema, before the conception of Krishna, their young son. Shweta cannot get over Hema’s death and especially the subsequent cremation, especially as Hans, who she has known since childhood, won’t talk about it. Hema is now one of the hungry ghosts, the dead who cannot be satiated. Krishna is bullied daily at school, has a spunky heart, nevertheless, and gets excited when his father brings home old issues of Popular Mechanics. The people he surrounds himself with also protect him—his cousin, Tarek, and a set of twins who are always rough and ready to brawl if someone messes with them. The barrack, however, continues to deteriorate. “The barrack was a fossil embedded in quicksand. No longer attached to an estate. Attached to any higher purpose whatsoever. And anything without a higher purpose was destined to be eaten by time.”
In this exquisitely written novel, Kevin Jared Hosein delivers a transcendently tragic exploration of life and death in this time and within these people. Some worship in the old African tradition, and there are others willing to convert to Christianity, believing it will transform their lives into prosperity. I read in shock as characters I thought were upright are led astray by the promise of money and power. There are times I had to put the book down for a minute or two while I took some deep breaths. The big house on the farm and the barrack below mingle in an unforgettable and resounding tale that unfolds and reflects the art of oral storytelling.
Recalling a situation about unlikable people he needed to endure, a character relates it to a bison and its flies. “While the bison grazed in the field, it would swish its tail at the gathering flies. There is rarely a moment when the bison wouldn’t have to do this, and so someone seeing the bison for the first time would think it just enjoys swishing its tail. It has gotten so accustomed to this dance that its facial expression never shifts while its tail, like an automaton, bats away fly after fly. He said that people might mistake the bison’s impassiveness for laziness. But such was a daily dance that became part of its personality.”
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Top reviews from other countries
Benoit
Excellent story based on history that's not well known
Reviewed in Canada on April 10, 2023
