All Decent Animals

April 1, 2013
Guyanese-British Kempadoo's third novel (Tide Running, 2003, etc.) again takes on the socioeconomic complexity of the Caribbean, this time in Trinidad as a multiracial group cares for a friend dying of AIDS. A fluid sense of time and Kempadoo's mix of native patois and feverishly descriptive prose creates an almost hallucinogenic atmosphere to fill out the skeletal story of Trinidadian architect Fraser's last days. Before his diagnosis, Fraser was already the center of a multicultural, multiracial circle of educated, artistic types. The son of middle-class Trinidadians, educated at Cambridge and gay, Frazier is a confusion of mixed allegiances, and during the lively parties he throws at the beautiful home he designed, his own conversation shifts in a heartbeat from local slang to proper British. But after he collapses from renal failure and discovers he has full-blown AIDS, his friends surround him: his tough but devoted houseboy, his lovers, his elegant and sexy women friends, the Catholic priest with whom he sparred over a building project, his furiously proper mother and browbeaten father, the working-class cab driver who suffered his own catastrophic loss when his Indian girlfriend was murdered. In particular, there is the Caribbean artist Ata, whose conflicted consciousness lightly weaves together the fragmented plot. Ata lives with Fraser's friend Pierre, a French U.N. bureaucrat, and Fraser's illness exposes cracks in the couple's relationship. Like Fraser, Ata finds herself torn between her identity as a Caribbean and her embrace of Pierre's European sophistication. Despite its intense sensuality, this is a novel more of ideas than emotions. How to balance the corruption and the creativity that define Trinidad and its vibrant but disturbingly violent boomtown capital, Port of Spain? How to balance European logic against the less rational, even magical power of the island? How to move past the history of political domination? How to live fully in the moment yet think clearly? How to communicate to anyone outside oneself? "How to live with the ugliness of the beauty we love?" Kempadoo's sensuous language and tangled storytelling veer between hypnotic and incomprehensible.

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Starred review from May 1, 2013

In this latest from Kempadoo (following Tide Running and Buxton Spice), a young woman named Ata returns to the economically struggling island of Trinidad. Friendship is at the heart of this story as Ata and her French boyfriend, Pierre; and their friend, Marriette, care for the deteriorating Fraser, a closeted gay man who has AIDS. Kempadoo's characters are complicated and intriguing, the dialog is rich and honest, and the poetic language reveals Kempadoo's skills as she effectively captures her Caribbean culture: "The coolness reminds Ata of her friend's past words. Their glasses empty, sun gone, say no more but the restless, bittersweet breath of the town sighs in Ata's ear." VERDICT Reminiscent of Alex Wheatle's Island Songs, this accomplished novel explores Trinidad's cultural complexities and its dealings with more prosperous nations and will appeal to lovers of literary and Caribbean fiction.--Ashanti White, Yelm, WA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2013
Over the last 15 years, Kempadoo has established herself as a preeminent writer of Caribbean fiction. Her first two novels, Tide Running (1999) and Buxton Spice (2003), depict in pristine clarity Tobago and Guyana, respectively. Here she portrays Trinidad, as we follow the paths of young carnival designer Atalanta and her lover, the Frenchman Pierre, who must cope with the slow AIDS-related withering of their dear friend Fraser, a Cambridge-educated architect. During the pre-Lenten lead-up to Carnaval, Ata and Pierre struggle to balance their professional and romantic relationships in frenzied anticipation. Kempadoo's narration alternates between the formal language of international development and a heavily dialectized slang, to create a creolized island English. Together with references to local rhythms like calypso, kaiso, and soca, the effect is of sheer saturation, as seamlessly coupled as night jasmine and passion fruit, with certain scenes nearly synesthetic in their blending of sensory impressions. Yet even a climactic and mysterious encounter between lovers grows dark, wrapped in bitter seaweed and plunged in salt water, the excitement tempered by Fraser's impending fate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)