Prospero's Daughter
A Novel
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Set on a Caribbean island in the grip of colonialism, this novel is “masterful . . . simply wonderful . . . [an] exquisite retelling of The Tempest” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
When Peter Gardner’s ruthless medical genius leads him to experiment on his unwitting patients—often at the expense of their lives—he flees England, seeking an environ where his experiments might continue without scrutiny. He arrives with his three-year-old-daughter, Virginia, in Chacachacare, an isolated island off the coast of Trinidad, in the early 1960s.
Gardner considers the locals to be nothing more than savages. He assumes ownership of the home of a servant boy named Carlos, seeing in him a suitable subject for his amoral medical work. Nonetheless, he educates the boy alongside Virginia. As Virginia and Carlos come of age together, they form a covert relationship that violates the outdated mores of colonial rule.
When Gardner unveils the pair’s relationship and accuses Carlos of a monstrous act, the investigation into the truth is left up to a curt, stonehearted British inspector, whose inquiries bring to light a horrendous secret. At turns epic and intimate, Prospero's Daughter, from American Book Award winner Elizabeth Nunez, uses Shakespeare’s play as a template to address questions of race, class, and power, in the story of an unlikely bond between a boy and a girl of disparate backgrounds on a verdant Caribbean island during the height of tensions between the native population and British colonists.
“Gripping and richly imagined . . . a master at pacing and plotting . . . an entirely new story that is inspired by Shakespeare, but not beholden to him.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Absorbing . . . [Nunez] writes novels that resound with thunder and fury.” —Essence
“A story about the transformative power of love . . . Readers are sure to enjoy the journey.” —Black Issues Book Review (Novel of the Year)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nunez (Bruised Hibiscus; Grace) critiques colonialist assumptions about race and class in this ambitious reworking of The Tempest, set in her native Trinidad in the early 1960s. Dr. Peter Gardner (the Prospero figure) arrives on the island with his baby daughter after a botched medical experiment in England made him an outlaw. The novel's Caliban is Carlos, a mixed-race orphan whose house on an outlying island the doctor steals. Gardner teaches the boy biology, astronomy, music "an exclusively European education," Carlos later reflects but his natural brilliance far surpasses anything the doctor can impart. Inevitably, Carlos and Gardner's daughter, Virginia (Miranda), fall in love; the doctor, in a paroxysm of rage at the thought of a sexual union between his daughter and a dark-skinned man, accuses Carlos of attempted rape. As the criminal charge is investigated, Nunez reveals Gardner to be the real criminal not only toward Carlos, but also toward his native servant, Ariana (Ariel), and Virginia herself. With its strong themes and dramatic ironies, this story should speak for itself; Nunez, however, overexplains her material, forecasting plot developments and leaning, at times, toward didacticism. But while her portrait of demonic scientist Gardner remains superficial, readers will find her love story which has a refreshingly happy ending very sensitively told.
