The language here is fantastic - the Acknowledgements section of the book says it's Trinidadian Creole, and I've never read anything in that (or even like that) before, as far as I remember, so it's new and interesting to me. Credit also to the cover artist, because I saw this book at the library and immediately knew I wanted to read it, simply because the cover was so outstanding. Part of me wishes that both these things had been in service of a happier book, but that book would have a different protagonist, and Alethea is undeniably the best thing about this.

There's no denying that The Bread the Devil Knead covers some monstrously grim material - there's a rape of a five year old here that's just awful to read - but Alethea's voice is sympathetic and compelling, and the gradual accumulation of friends and family around her as she claws her way out of horror does provide an element of relief in the text. My initial reaction, after the events near the end of the book (I'm trying not to give away that ending) was that I wished she'd been able to be a little more proactive in ridding herself of her current abuser, but a couple of minutes of second thought made me wonder if I'd missed the point. Resilience isn't always one cathartic event. It can also be a slow process of determined survival, and the expectation that Alethea represent the former but not the latter is a narrow one, I think, and almost takes away from everything that she has achieved in building a life for herself, even if that life is not a perfect one.