The Last Warner Woman
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
'One woman's tragic tale, beautifully told' Independent on Sunday
FROM KEI MILLER, WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION
Once upon a time in Jamaica a young woman went somewhere that no one had visited for years.
It may have been nestled in a valley between the Stone Hill mountains of St Catherine, four rocking chairs on a veranda surveying a garden full of bougainvillea and vegetables.
Or perhaps it was merely a pastel-coloured house on an ordinary street in Spanish Town.
One thing everyone agrees on: this is the place that Adamine Bustamante was born.
When Adamine grows up she discovers she has the gift of 'warning': the power to both protect and terrify. But no one tells her that in England her prophecies of hurricanes and earthquakes will meet with a different kind of fear.
Now Adamine wants to tell her story.
But she must wrestle for the truth with 'Mr Writer Man', for he is taking her words and twisting them...
A ROLLERCOASTER OF A NOVEL ABOUT A YOUNG JAMAICAN WOMAN WITH A GIFT OF PROPHECY EMBARKING ON AN EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY
Praise for Kei Miller, winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature,
shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Green Carnation Prize and the Historical Writers Award:
'Miller's storytelling is superb' Sunday Times
'Language as clear as spring water' Observer
'Richly nuanced and empathetic' Guardian
'Truly panoramic' Sunday Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beautifully imaginative and structurally inventive, Miller's second novel (after The Same Earth) tells the story of Adamine Bustamante, an orphan raised in a leper colony in Spanish Town, Jamaica, whose gift of "warning" leads her to join the Revivalist Church. When Adamine immigrates to England in search of a better life, she is locked up in a mental asylum for preaching her doomsday views. Years later, released from the institution, she meets "Mr. Writer Man," a young author interested in telling her story. Miller's narrative alternates between Adamine's first-person account, told in a colorful and soul-baring patois, and sections recounted, mostly in the third person, by Mr. Writer Man. The two viewpoints at times conflict in illuminating ways, but Mr. Writer Man's reflections on truth, history, and literature pale next to the plot's more immediate concerns: spirituality, violence against women, and migration, to name a few. Miller's talents as a storyteller come to the fore in the book's climactic final chapters, when previously withheld plot details are revealed, tying the book together. The challenge for the reader is to get through the opening chapters, whose leaps in time and shifts in point of view slow the story. But it's worth the effort.
