Review by Booklist Review
The setting of McCaulay's latest novel is a rural Jamaican village, Mason Hall, St. Mary's Parish. Fierce, independent Pauline Sinclair has built a house of stone to avenge her enslaved ancestors. As she nears her 100th birthday, the stones start to rattle, and ghostly voices begin speaking. These experiences are connected to a secret that Pauline has kept close for most of her life and is now ready to let go of. A mystery at the core of the narrative and McCaulay's masterful pacing keep readers turning the pages until the very end. Everything about the novel is charming and engrossing, from the delicious patois dialect to the mouthwatering descriptions of Jamaican cuisine to the stunningly depicted natural landscape. Pauline's story becomes more robust as McCaulay draws on tumultuous events in Caribbean history. Richly drawn, powerful characters tug at your heartstrings, bring tears to your eyes, and make you laugh out loud. Above it all, McCaulay's skillful, impeccable, lyrical prose captivates instantly; readers will revel in every glorious sentence.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Jamaican writer McCaulay (Daylight Come) draws on her mixed-race ancestry and her country's legacy of slavery for this convoluted tale of a community roiled by a land claim. As a preteen in the 1930s, Pauline Sinclair is transfixed by the ruins of a Portuguese plantation house in the bush outside her village of Mason Hall. Years later, Pauline builds a sturdy house for her family with limestone salvaged from the plantation. In 1987, an American named Turner Bachman arrives in Mason Hall, claiming he's the rightful heir to the plantation along with the land occupied by Pauline and her neighbors. He sells thousands of acres to a developer before he mysteriously disappears. Now, as Pauline's 100th birthday approaches and she reflects on the past in conversations with her granddaughter Justine ("You ever tink about it, Jussy? How we come to be yah so? How a whiteman jus' pitch up in Mason Hall an decide sey this is him land"), the circumstances behind Turner's disappearance gradually come to light. McCaulay keenly evokes a sense of place, but the characterizations of Pauline and Justine are inconsistent and the payoff to the mystery of Turner's fate disappoints. This one doesn't quite hang together. Agent: Laetitia Rutherford, Watson, Little. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In a Jamaican village, a 99-year-old woman uses modern tools to deal with a complicated past. At the center of McCaulay's seventh book is the towering character of Miss Pauline Sinclair, who at the age of nearly 100 is driven by the sense that the stones of her house are urging her to deal with the shady history of that edifice. The stones were originally part of a backra mansion in the bush--a house that belonged to white slaveholders. Miss Pauline came upon the backra estate when she was a child fleeing sexual assault by the local pastor and eventually decided to transport its stones to build her own dwelling on a more advantageous site. Her initiative was copied by her neighbors, creating a whole village of stone houses, and when Miss Pauline became a ganja grower in the wake of Hurricane Gilbert, she was able to put in an indoor bathroom and kitchen, pay for her children's schooling, and support the family after their father's death. But now, as she feels death approaching, she's troubled by the memory of a white man named Turner Buchanan who came to her in 1987 with a pile of paperwork; he subsequently disappeared and a taxi driver was jailed for his murder. She has been keeping secrets about this situation for a long time. One of the most charming elements of the novel is Miss Pauline's friendship with Lamont, a motorcycle-riding teen who helps her use Skype, Facebook, and email to reconnect with relatives and search out others connected to her story. McCaulay was inspired by the discovery of her own complex multiracial genealogy, as she discloses in an author's note, and she's even given some of the historic characters the names of her ancestors. As it makes its points about the complex legacy of colonialism and recaps a century of life in rural Jamaica through the eyes of one fierce and enterprising woman, the novel educates and entertains. Alive with the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of Jamaica. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
