Book Review: The Day I Fell off My Island by Yvonne Bailey-Smith

 

ABOUT:

The Day I Fell Off My Island tells the story of Erna Mullings, a teenage Jamaican girl uprooted from her island following the sudden death of her beloved grandmother. When Erna is sent to England to be reunited with her siblings, she dreads leaving behind her elderly grandfather, and the only life she has ever known. A new future unfolds, in a strange country and with a mother she barely knows. The next decade will be a complex journey of estrangement and arrival, new beginnings, and the uncovering of long-buried secrets.

MY THOUGHTS:

This was indeed a page turner. Another great Caribbean novel. I love stories about migration since this is very much a part of Caribbean life.

In this novel we meet Erna Mullings a young girl who lives in rural Jamaica with her grandparents. Having no relationship with both her parents, Erna spends her childhood happy in the humble home of her grandparents.

When Erna's grandmother Melba dies, and after her siblings " devil" dad kidnaps them. She is forced to go live with her mom, husband and siblings in England.

Life in England proves hard for Erna as she realizes that all is not well with Violet (her mom) and especially her sister Patsy, whose behaviour reveals something sinister.

Erna's determination to improve her situation in spite of everything is what made the book so wonderful for me. Her love for her island home and her grandparents was also very moving.

This story was tragic, yet very beautiful. I highly recommend this one.

BOOK REVIEW: When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

About

A mythic love story set in Trinidad and Tobago, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.

You were never the smartest child, but even you should know that when a dead woman offers you a cigarette, the polite thing to do would be to take it. Especially when that dead woman is your mother.

The St. Bernard women have lived in Morne Marie, the house on top of a hill outside Port Angeles, for generations. Built from the ashes of a plantation that enslaved their ancestors, it has come to shelter a lineage that is bonded by much more than blood. One woman in each generation of St. Bernards is responsible for the passage of the city's souls into the afterlife. But Yejide's relationship with her mother, Petronella, has always been contorted by anger and neglect, which Petronella stubbornly carries to her death bed, leaving Yejide unprepared to fulfill her destiny.

Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when his ailing mother can no longer work and the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life she built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.

Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, Port Angeles's largest and oldest cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and immersive lyricism, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.

My Thoughts

This was one of my book club picks a while ago and I would be the first to admit I could not get past the first fifty pages. Fast forward to April 2023 at the Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad and Tobago, this book was displayed everywhere. I said to myself "nah" there has to be something that I am missing with this, so after purchasing a physical copy (cause I was reading it on my kindle before), I decided to give it a second chance. All I can say I am glad I did.

This book was out of my comfort zone, but I liked it very much. 

Magical realism is what it is most described as. This writer is skilled and brave because to write a story with complexed characters like Yejide and Darwin takes guts because it could either have been a hit or miss. I for one am glad she challenged herself.

After arriving to Port Angeles to take up a position as a grave digger (which is totally against his rastafarian beliefs), Darwin intends to make something of himself. However, danger lurks in the form of his coworkers. Yejide is a woman with a strange gift that comes to life upon the death of her mother Petronella. She has the ability to connect with the dead. A blessing or a curse inherited from her female ancestors, Yejide will soon find out the extent of her power when hers and Darwin's path collides.

Adventurous, Exciting, A real page turner, When we were birds will keep you at the edge of your seat.

 

BOOK REVIEW: TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW BY GABRIELLE ZEVIN

ABOUT

In this exhilarating novel, two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

My Thoughts

One word PERFECT!!!

I am in no way a fan of videogames so when I saw that this book was voted as one of the best books of 2022 by goodreads I was curious.

All I can say is, believe the hype. I enjoyed reading this from start to finish.

This story spoke to the power of friendship. It taught us the real meaning of LOVE (all types). the fact that the author used the creation of the game "Ichigo' to connect the three main characters Sadie, Sam and Marx was genius.

I am not going to write a very long review for this one because I really do not want to spoil it for anyone. I highly recommend this.