Latest Review: "The Bridge of Beyond" by Simone Schwarz-Bart

The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Christopher Iacono on Simone Schwarz-Bart’s The Bridge of Beyond, out from New York Review Books.

Chris is a new addition to our reviewers, and is a writer, copy editor, and proofreader from Methuen, MA; he also runs the Good Coffee Book Blog.

Here’s the beginning of Chris’s review:

“A man’s country may be cramped or vast according to the size of his heart. I’ve never found my country too small, though that isn’t to say my heart is great. And if I could choose it’s here in Guadeloupe that I’d be born again, suffer and die. Yet not long back my ancestors were slaves on this volcanic, hurricane swept, mosquito ridden, nasty-minded island. But I didn’t come into the world to weigh the world’s woe. I prefer to dream, on and on, standing on my garden, till death comes and takes me as I dream, me and all my joy.”

This is how Telumee “Miracle” Lougandor begins her story in the new edition of The Bridge of Beyond by Caribbean novelist Simone Schwarz-Bart. This introductory paragraph sums up her life: Despite the fact that fate has brought her life so much suffering from the time she was born, she finds happiness in it. In fact, Telumee is the last of a line of strong women who showed great strength during times of great adversity.

After being freed by an owner known for his cruelty, Telumee’s great grandmother, Minerva, works the land and raises her daughter with the help of another in a hamlet called L’Abandonee. Minerva’s daughter, Toussine, is not as lucky as her mother: Her house burns down, two of her children die, and her husband is murdered. Meanwhile, her third child, Victory, who is also Telumee’s mother, spends her time getting drunk and wandering the streets, unable to care for her two daughters. Despite the tragedies and the fact that she is isolated in a cabin in another village, she becomes venerated as “Queen Without a Name.”

Go here for the rest of the review.