A work of historical fiction, it's neither light nor easy but it is a page-turner.
One of the first things that struck me is the use of language, the author's deft interweaving of reality, imagery, metaphor, current action, foreshadowing, plot advancement, and characterization in a lush, epic, multi-character tale.
It follows characters born and raised in Jamaica and rural England, their ultimate convergence in the city of London before, during, or after World War 2, as well as several characters' experience of that war in the various homelands of Empire and the far-flung theatres of that world-changing war.
Hortense shared Gilbert's dream of leaving Jamaica and coming to England to start a better life. But when she at last joins her husband, she is shocked by London's shabbiness and horrified at the way the English live. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was. Queenie's neighbours do not approve of her choice of tenants, and neither would her husband, were he there. Through the stories of these people, Small Island explores a point in England's past when the country began to change.
It is a beautiful and aching; filled with lingering characters, flashes of brutal violence and almost-connections.
It is a window to the beauty and pain that is Haiti – past and present. It is both grounded and magical – clearly well-researched but soulful. Probing and yet sensitive. Artfully done.
It is not a collection of short stories but vignettes that are part of a single narrative terror, trauma, and survival, starting over, and ghosts of the past that linger. The characters are vivid, the language is lovely, the stories are grounded, and...life is unforgiving to some and too forgiving to others.
We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”--or torturer--s an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate…
This is Caribbean literature! The dark comedy of life and its frustrations in the Caribbean is front and center. Living a life with meaning (resisting a life without meaning) is a recurring theme.
It is an emotional rollercoaster, sadness so often falling away into hilarity; also, community, Carnival, Caribbean folklore, and genuine miracle.
It does feel like a moving picture, an epic even, as it moves from one connected (tangentially or deeply) life to the next, roping them in to each others' stories.
Bottom line, Is Just a Movie is a truly original novel; there was never a dull moment.
In Trinidad, in the wake of 1970's Black Power rebellion, we follow Sonnyboy, Singer King Kala, and their town's folk through experiments in music, politics, religion, and love and in their day-to-day adventures. Humorous and serious, sad and uplifting, Is Just a Movie, is a radiant novel about small moments of magic in ordinary life.
Earl Lovelace's books include While Gods Are Falling, winner of the BP Independence Award; the Caribbean classic The Dragon Can't Dance; and Salt, which won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize. For Is Just a Movie, he has won the Grand Prize for Caribbean Literature by…
"A cheetah is what I want to be...nothing would be faster than me!" As a mother tucks her little dreamer into bed, she lets him know that wherever he goes, he can always come home. This loving bedtime story transports readers from a cozy bedroom to the savannas of Africa and back again. Rich illustrations capture the natural world and the warmth of a mother-son relationship.
