Tales of empire

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The Orange Prize marathon continues on, despite being overtaken by events - the Prize was carried by Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna. For once, I find myself wholeheartedly in agreement with a panel of literary judges. In the meantime, I have finished The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey.

In exploring the politics of empire and the post-colonial turmoil of the British withdrawal from Trinidad through the portrayal of a marriage, Roffey turns to a predictable and not even uncommon trope for colonialism. And it has a strand of magic realism - groan - sprinkled throughout: the island is imagined as a voluptuous woman, shades of Garcia Marquez and shades of Hakluyt. Has imaging the colonies progressed no further in the occidental mind than the Elizabethans picturing America as Virginia, virgin land there for the despoliation? Has Said achieved nothing? Or is it all a clever ploy to depict the conflicted status of the non-native incomer, who feels Trinidadian but is not accepted by Trinidadians?

The writing is also a bit self-conscious: there’s a “creative writing evening class” non-linear narrative device which adds nothing, meaning that crisis comes too early and the second half is less savoured. At least, less savoured by me!

Having said that, on the whole, the writing was compelling if clunky: unsympathetic characters are well wrought and this was, for me, an affecting picture of the uneasy simmering tensions so typical of the multi-racial Caribbean. Perhaps more so because this happened to my family, with Jamaican independence, which promised so much and evolved into something quite different.

There was also a brief detour by way of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer - sadly, Shaffer died and the novel was completed by her niece, Barrows. You can tell, but it doesn‘t matter. This is a sweetly charming epistolary novel about love, loss and friendship set in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands. Highly recommended if you need to feel optimistic and joyful. Unusual to read a modern novel in letters - I think Ella Minnow Pea was the last one I read - and I have been inspired to read Richardson’s Pamela because of it.