SYNOPSIS
Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and coke. To many outsiders, these idyllic images represent the supposed easy life in Caribbean nations such as Trinidad and Tobago. However, the reality is far different for those who live there—a society where poverty and patriarchy savagely rule, and where love and revenge often go hand in hand.
Written in a combination of English and Trinidad Creole, Pleasantview reveals the dark side of the Caribbean dream. In this novel-in-stories about a fictional town in Trinidad, we meet a political candidate who sets out to slaughter endangered turtles for fun, while his rival candidate beats his “outside-woman,” so badly she ends up losing their baby. On the night of a political rally, the abused woman exacts a very public revenge, the trajectory of which echoes through Pleasantview, ending with one boy introducing another boy to a gun and to an ideology which will help him aim the weapon.
Merging the beauty and brutality of Trinidadian culture evoked by writers such as Ingrid Persaud and Claire Adam with the linguistic experimentation of Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings, Pleasantview is a landmark work from an important new voice in international literary fiction.
MY THOUGHTS
Pleasantview is a short story collection that will blow you away and guess what it is a book set in a fictitious town in Trinidad.
For anyone who is curious about the every day life of average folks in Trinidad read this book. While this is a work of fiction, each story speaks to the highs and lows of life in Trinidad touching on issues of migration, unemployment, religion, corruption, family struggles, politics and even culture. Reading this gave me an entire experience.
The highlight was the author's ability throughout the book to use Trinidadian prose. This gave the book a sense of realness and made me enjoy it even more.
In all this was just hands down good writing and deserving of my five star rating on Goodreads.
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