The True History of Paradise
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
It is 1981. Jean Landing secretly plans to flee her beloved Jamaica–the only home her family has ever known, a place now rife with political turmoil. But before she can make her final preparations, she receives devastating news: Lana, her sister, is dead. The country’s state of emergency leaves no time to arrange a proper funeral. Even Jean’s mother, Monica, who hadn’t spoken to Lana in more than a decade, cannot fully embrace her grief.
The tragedy only underscores Jean’s need to leave an island that holds no promise of a future. Her harrowing journey to freedom across a battered landscape takes Jean through a terrain of memories: of her childhood, with a detached mother at odds with an adoring father, of her complex bond with Lana, and of the friends and lovers who have shaped and shared her days. Epic in scope, The True History of Paradise poignantly portrays the complexities of family and racial identity in a troubled Eden.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Political unrest and violence in early 1980s Jamaica serve as the backdrop for a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her past and her country's history in Cezair-Thompson's strong debut novel. Jean Landing's island ancestry goes back to the late 17th century, and although in many ways she feels inextricably bound to Jamaica, the political turmoil makes her question whether she can continue to live in her native land. A series of profoundly unsettling events--she is knifed by thugs, sees a bystander shot by a soldier during a minor traffic accident, tearfully keeps vigil over her best friend Faye's hospital bed after Faye is raped and assaulted--seems portentous. But her talented sister Lana's tragic death is the catalyst to Jean's angst-ridden decision to leave her homeland and seek shelter with her stateside lover, a married man. Paul, her longtime neighbor, confidante and dear friend, drives her across the island to meet her departing flight. During the journey, they reflect on Lana, whose manic depressive illness contributed to her fiery death. Vignettes in the many voices of Jean's ancestors (Scottish, Chinese, Indian, Creole and African) punctuate the text, their eccentricities lending credence to the probably hereditary effects of mental instability and granting perspective to Jean's weighty decision. It falls to those voices to liven up the narrative when her sometimes overly earnest self-reflections begin to stall the momentum of the cross-island journey. Born in Jamaica, Thompson's use of island patois is robust and authentic. She manages to depict with vivid immediacy Jamaica's terrors and seductions, portraying a society in which poverty is endemic, and a sense of menace exists in a setting of paradisal beauty. FYI: Cezair-Thompson's first screenplay, Photo Finish, was sold to Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions.
