Carnival
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Commonwealth Prize-winning author of Divina Trace "has boldly recast Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises as a harrowing tale" set in the West Indies (Booklist, starred review).
Robert Antoni has established himself as one of the most innovative voices to emerge from the Caribbean and the Americas. His novel Carnival—"easily his most engrossing, direct work to date"—takes readers on a journey from contemporary New York City to the glitter of Trinidadian Carnival, and deep into the island's mountainous interior (Miami Herald).
Aspiring novelist William Fletcher has come to New York to escape his affluent West Indian roots, but a chance meeting reunites him with two of his childhood companions: Laurence, who escaped poverty to become a scholar and poet, and Rachel, William's second cousin and first love. Making good on a liquor-soaked pledge to return to Trinidad for Carnival, they soon find themselves sliding into a fog of ganja, alcohol, and sensual rhythm. But their hedonistic homecoming has also brought them face to face with the demons of history, prejudice, and violence they've spent their lives trying to forget.
"Carnival is an appropriately heady and wild novel, in which the air is suffused with dope smoke, calypso drumming and menace" (Independent on Sunday).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Struggling with the writer's life in New York City, ashamed of his wealthy West Indian upbringing and confused about his sexual orientation, William Fletcher is the smart, self-pitying narrator of this promising though unfocused novel, Antoni's third (Divina Trace; Blessed Is the Fruit). When William bumps into his old friend Laurence, once a poor island boy, now an Oxford-educated poet and playwright, and then into Rachel, his second cousin and first love, the trio hatch a plan to return to their native Trinidad to celebrate Carnival. For all the debauchery that is Carnival (think Scotch, marijuana, fireworks, jouvert bands), this section of the novel feels curiously bloodless, perhaps because Antoni's style tends toward short fragments ("He sat up, arms folded over chest. Breathing quickly. His chest rising, falling. Staring down at the ground") and weak transitions ("Before I had a chance to think about it..."; "Before I knew it..."; etc.) The final act of the novel shifts to a remote, mountainous region where William and friends intend to sober up from the merrymaking, but instead find themselves involved in a violent incident involving the Earth People (an isolated settlement of rastas) and a racist police force. Antoni's major themes race (William is white, Laurence black, Rachel French-Creole) and sexuality are good ones, but they're not sufficiently developed, and the plot feels somewhat manufactured.
