Here comes the sun

Nicole Dennis-Benn

eAudio - 2016

Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis-Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the wide expanse of turquoise seas. At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate. When plans for a new hotel threaten their village, Margot sees not only an opportunity for her own financial independence but also perhaps a chance to admit a shocking secret: her forbidden love for another woman. As they face the impending destruction of their community, each woman - fighting to balance the burdens she shoulders with the freedom... she craves - must confront long-hidden scars. From a much-heralded new writer, Here Comes the Sun offers a dramatic glimpse into a vibrant, passionate world most outsiders see simply as paradise.

Saved in:
Subjects
Genres
Bildungsromans
Published
[United States] : HighBridge 2016.
Language
English
Corporate Author
hoopla digital
Main Author
Nicole Dennis-Benn (author)
Corporate Author
hoopla digital (-)
Other Authors
Bahni Turpin (narrator)
Edition
Unabridged
Online Access
Instantly available on hoopla.
Cover image
Physical Description
1 online resource (1 audio file (11hr., 44 min.)) : digital
Format
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
ISBN
9781681682716
Access
AVAILABLE FOR USE ONLY BY IOWA CITY AND RESIDENTS OF THE CONTRACTING GOVERNMENTS OF JOHNSON COUNTY, UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, HILLS, AND LONE TREE (IA).
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

MONTEGO BAY, the hub of Jamaica's tourist industry, is the setting of "Here Comes the Sun," Nicole Dennis-Benn's first novel. In her opening paragraph, she makes her intention clear: to avert our attention from the opulent hotels to the impoverished neighborhoods of those who depend on tourism for their survival. By day Margot works the front desk at Palm Star Resort. At night "her real work" begins: selling her body to the resort's paying guests. Although economically and socially disadvantaged, Margot is not easily exploited. Dennis-Benn's protagonist is refreshingly brave, clever and ambitious. Margot debases herself to pay for the private education of her younger sister, Thandi. Book-smart and talented, Thandi is the family's only hope of escaping the shabby village of River Bank. As Margot moves between the starkly different worlds of River Bank and the resort, she carries a secret - her love affair with Verdene Moore, a reclusive lesbian whom the people of River Bank view as the Antichrist. Verdene's pink house, "built with real cement," vividly embodies her difference and her vulnerability. Neighbors leave dead animals on her lawn and smear hateful words across her door with animal blood. Margot approaches Verdene's house each night with fear, recalling the brutal killing of other lesbians. Dennis-Benn, born and raised in Jamaica, doesn't exaggerate the threat these lovers face. "Here Comes the Sun" sheds much-needed light on the island's disenfranchised, particularly on the hardships suffered by its L.G.B.T. community. The light radiating from what might otherwise be too bleak a story is Margot's love for her sister. Her hope of providing a better future for Thandi is palpable, an unquenchable fire blazing through the novel, likely to scorch anyone who stands in the way. Thandi herself emerges as a complex, engaging character. In spite of all she has going for her, she lacks self-esteem because she is dark-skinned in a society Dennis-Benn portrays as harrowingly shade-conscious. "Who want to be black like dat in dis place?" asks Miss Ruby, River Bank's unlicensed beautician. Thandi purchases "Queen of Pearl crème," a chemical-ridden bleaching agent, and undergoes Miss Ruby's dangerous skin-lightening procedure, imagining "her blackness peeling off, the hydrogen peroxide Miss Ruby pours into the mixture acting like an abrasive, a medicine for her melancholy." In exposing the flip side of this well-advertised island paradise, Dennis-Benn risks reducing Jamaica's complex society to a false binary - white vs. black, affluent vs. destitute. There are times, too, when inauthentic details undermine the novel's credibility. More than once, Dennis-Benn mentions the "heavy scent of bougainvillea," a gorgeous but essentially odorless flower. And readers familiar with Jamaica will note that the Blue Mountains, located in the east, cannot be seen from any window in Montego Bay. These editorial blind spots, while momentarily disengaging, don't detract from the sincerity of Benn's subject or her skillful handling of the plot. She carefully waits, for instance, to reveal the early trauma that has hardened Margot's heart. HER PROSE IS best when she allows her characters heightened moments of awareness. In a remarkable passage, Margot's mother remembers a bus trip she took to Devon House, the restored great-house of Jamaica's first black millionaire. Something unforeseen happened to her on that trip, and she recalls that on the way back her home looked different: "The sea-green of the nauseating sea, the sneering sun in the wide expanse of a pale sky, the indecisive Y-shaped river that once swallowed her childhood, and even the red dirt from the bauxite mines caked under her worn heels, seemed like a wide-open wound that bled and bled between the rural parishes." Similarly, readers of this important debut will no doubt see Jamaicain anew and different light. MARGARET CEZAIR-THOMPSON is the author of "The True History of Paradise" and "The Pirate's Daughter." She teaches at Wellesley College.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 14, 2016]
Review by Library Journal Review

Set in Montego Bay, Jamaica, this debut novel revolves around Dolores and her two children, Margot and Thandi, revealing the intersection of poverty, race, and sex. Sixteen-year-old Thandi, the focus of her mother's and older sister's hopes for future financial success, studies at a prestigious private high school thanks to Margot's relationship with her boss, the owner of the Palm Star Resort. Margot's job doesn't pay well, so she supplements her income by serving as the hotel's unofficial in-house prostitute. Unaware of her older sister's secret life, Thandi wants to be an artist and freewheeling teenager, not a wealthy doctor and the family's redeemer. As the end of school nears, a new resort hotel threatens the family's home, secrets old and new are uncovered, and family bonds unravel. The descriptions are vivid but not graphic, the language fluid, and the characters well developed. The Jamaican patois used for some of the dialog highlights the class and identity issues that run throughout. Verdict Not for the faint of heart, as the women are often unlikable and their circumstances dire, but readers and book clubs interested in complicated characters and challenging themes will appreciate this first novel. [See Prepub Alert, 1/11/16.]-Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.