... the book, set in Dominica and Washington D.C., is a first effort from Antigua's Marie-Elena John ... titled "Unburnable" it has been in print three or four years now ... recommendations came from more than one person ...
... written reviews I've seen are overwhelmingly positive ... were I to write one it would heavily skew towards the favourable too ... some testimonial anecdotes have referred to the plethora of characters and intersecting timelines as requiring back-referencing during the read ... this was not my experience ... I, famous for sometimes starting but not finishing a book, was compelled by the artful storytelling and entertained from beginning to very end, even when, at times, I was able to anticipate a plot turn ...
... now, books are great ... reading is good ... many of us actually combine the two on occasion and actually ... read books ... I was a keen reader as a boy ... historical chronology has me reading at three years old (!!), and indeed, one of the earliest memories I have is being taken to join the public library on Tom Redcam Drive in Kingston ... (Thomas MacDermot was a Jamaican writer from the turn of the previous century who encouraged local readers with local fare ... he published under the mischievously inverted surname pseudonym Tom Redcam) ...
... at a certain point in my life, probably when other things started to make demands on my time ... sports, girls, academic nonchalance ... it became acceptable to my set of personal standards to read fewer books .... I favoured newspapers and the picture-heavy, sexier kid-sister of the book known as the magazine ... the competition for my reduced time-allotted-for-reading now has to take the blogosphere into account as well ...
... my reading habits weren't pre-figured ... I was one of those students who enjoyed English Lit., Shakespeare, Chaucer, the entire axis of de rigeur Anglo-American literati ... Hemmingway, Hardy, Steinbeck ... who can forget To Kill A Mockingbird or The Crucible ... characters like Holden Caulfield ... and Dickens, it's a long list ... in my time we were also taught broad historical and geopolitical identifiers of our diversity but academic acceptance for homegrown authors and artists, barring a select few, was still in the process of being won ...
... true too is the admission that adolescent education of the libidinous sort found in Lady Chatterley's Lover, dog-eared, passed-around copies of Fanny Hill, or passages in parentally ratified blockbusters-of-the-day like Portnoy's Complaint, Valley Of The Dolls or Fear Of Flying, lured me away from Tolstoy and Tolkien ... in my imagination gulag and hobbit could never compete with gonad and hormone ....
... thankfully today there's a vibrant literary scene encompassing the whole "carry-beyond" and it's scattered bloodlines ... poets, novelists, playwrights, biographers and bloggers abound ... the beauty of a work like "Unburnable" is the seamless representation of so many factors in this reader's socialization ... Caribbean cultural themes replete with indigenous, African, European exposition, contemporized by concurrent doses of Diaspora featuring media-savvy lifestyles and BB texting ...
... written reviews I've seen are overwhelmingly positive ... were I to write one it would heavily skew towards the favourable too ... some testimonial anecdotes have referred to the plethora of characters and intersecting timelines as requiring back-referencing during the read ... this was not my experience ... I, famous for sometimes starting but not finishing a book, was compelled by the artful storytelling and entertained from beginning to very end, even when, at times, I was able to anticipate a plot turn ...
... now, books are great ... reading is good ... many of us actually combine the two on occasion and actually ... read books ... I was a keen reader as a boy ... historical chronology has me reading at three years old (!!), and indeed, one of the earliest memories I have is being taken to join the public library on Tom Redcam Drive in Kingston ... (Thomas MacDermot was a Jamaican writer from the turn of the previous century who encouraged local readers with local fare ... he published under the mischievously inverted surname pseudonym Tom Redcam) ...
... at a certain point in my life, probably when other things started to make demands on my time ... sports, girls, academic nonchalance ... it became acceptable to my set of personal standards to read fewer books .... I favoured newspapers and the picture-heavy, sexier kid-sister of the book known as the magazine ... the competition for my reduced time-allotted-for-reading now has to take the blogosphere into account as well ...
... my reading habits weren't pre-figured ... I was one of those students who enjoyed English Lit., Shakespeare, Chaucer, the entire axis of de rigeur Anglo-American literati ... Hemmingway, Hardy, Steinbeck ... who can forget To Kill A Mockingbird or The Crucible ... characters like Holden Caulfield ... and Dickens, it's a long list ... in my time we were also taught broad historical and geopolitical identifiers of our diversity but academic acceptance for homegrown authors and artists, barring a select few, was still in the process of being won ...
... true too is the admission that adolescent education of the libidinous sort found in Lady Chatterley's Lover, dog-eared, passed-around copies of Fanny Hill, or passages in parentally ratified blockbusters-of-the-day like Portnoy's Complaint, Valley Of The Dolls or Fear Of Flying, lured me away from Tolstoy and Tolkien ... in my imagination gulag and hobbit could never compete with gonad and hormone ....
... thankfully today there's a vibrant literary scene encompassing the whole "carry-beyond" and it's scattered bloodlines ... poets, novelists, playwrights, biographers and bloggers abound ... the beauty of a work like "Unburnable" is the seamless representation of so many factors in this reader's socialization ... Caribbean cultural themes replete with indigenous, African, European exposition, contemporized by concurrent doses of Diaspora featuring media-savvy lifestyles and BB texting ...
... we of the islands are known to be a matriarch driven social engine, and appropriately, the female characters in this book reflect a variety of strengths and authorities ... all have innate understanding of yoni power and how it can make the world ... and the men within it ... turn ... or burn ...
