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stuckinthebook 's review for:
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House
by Cherie Jones
Personally, I thought that all the books shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction looked incredible and I set out on a mission to read each one before the winner was announced. I didn’t quite achieve that goal but one book I’m glad I got the chance to read was How The One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House.
This debut novel from the brilliant Caribbean writer, Cherie Jones, is set in Barbados and follows four people’s desperate escape from their legacy of violence in a so-called ‘paradise’. In Baxter Beach, Barbados, moneyed ex-pats clash with the locals who often end up serving them: braiding their hair, minding their children, and selling them drugs. Lala lives on the beach with her husband, Adan, a petty criminal with endless charisma whose thwarted burglary of one of the Baxter Beach mansions sets off a chain of events with terrible consequences. A gunshot no one was meant to witness. A new mother whose baby is found lifeless on the beach. A woman torn between two worlds and incapacitated by grief. And two men driven by desperation and greed who attempt a crime that will risk their freedom and their lives.
I found this book extremely difficult to read purely because the events that happen in this book are not for the faint-hearted. However, even though some chapters were truly brutal and shocking, something kept me reading and I’m still quite unsure what that was. I guess the characters, especially the female characters, were mesmerizing and my heart was with them throughout the whole story. I guess I kept reading on, through all the difficult scenes, because I was so invested in the stories of the women we were reading about. It made me realise that literally every single female character in the book had at some point been badly affected by the actions of self-centred and mentally ill men. Yet because of the culture and the generations of local people used to keeping secrets about the way their men behave, it was heart-breaking that the brutal and disgusting treatment of women was ‘normal’.
The story explores a huge number of difficult topics, with the death of a new-born baby and the murder of a wealthy man at it’s heart. Yet even though I felt unbelievably sad for all of the female characters, there were also a number of male characters who due to the lifestyle they’ve found themselves in (from no fault of their own) find themselves in inescapable situations just to get by.
So obviously this is far from a light read but it is a great book that forces you to open your eyes to what is going on in other parts of the world and in other cultures, enabling us to understand further the effects that systemic and racist poverty has on generations of lonely and helpless generations.
READ THIS IF :
This debut novel from the brilliant Caribbean writer, Cherie Jones, is set in Barbados and follows four people’s desperate escape from their legacy of violence in a so-called ‘paradise’. In Baxter Beach, Barbados, moneyed ex-pats clash with the locals who often end up serving them: braiding their hair, minding their children, and selling them drugs. Lala lives on the beach with her husband, Adan, a petty criminal with endless charisma whose thwarted burglary of one of the Baxter Beach mansions sets off a chain of events with terrible consequences. A gunshot no one was meant to witness. A new mother whose baby is found lifeless on the beach. A woman torn between two worlds and incapacitated by grief. And two men driven by desperation and greed who attempt a crime that will risk their freedom and their lives.
I found this book extremely difficult to read purely because the events that happen in this book are not for the faint-hearted. However, even though some chapters were truly brutal and shocking, something kept me reading and I’m still quite unsure what that was. I guess the characters, especially the female characters, were mesmerizing and my heart was with them throughout the whole story. I guess I kept reading on, through all the difficult scenes, because I was so invested in the stories of the women we were reading about. It made me realise that literally every single female character in the book had at some point been badly affected by the actions of self-centred and mentally ill men. Yet because of the culture and the generations of local people used to keeping secrets about the way their men behave, it was heart-breaking that the brutal and disgusting treatment of women was ‘normal’.
The story explores a huge number of difficult topics, with the death of a new-born baby and the murder of a wealthy man at it’s heart. Yet even though I felt unbelievably sad for all of the female characters, there were also a number of male characters who due to the lifestyle they’ve found themselves in (from no fault of their own) find themselves in inescapable situations just to get by.
So obviously this is far from a light read but it is a great book that forces you to open your eyes to what is going on in other parts of the world and in other cultures, enabling us to understand further the effects that systemic and racist poverty has on generations of lonely and helpless generations.
READ THIS IF :