[full disclosure: this is a review of only the first story in her trilogy of novellas: Love, Anger, Madness; I’ll be reading the others at a later date] 

a nutshell: an intelligent, wistful 39yo woman is fly-on-the-wall to scandals & corruption within her own household and beyond in a 1940s Haitian village

a line: “This resurrected past appeared to me as through a thick veil behind which I have evolved separate from my real self: an astonished spectator of my own life”

an image: an unmarried virgin longing for motherhood, Claire secretly caresses a beloved doll that serves as her makeshift baby

a thought: for me this was a story streaked with more hate than love – our narrator can be vengeful & deceptive, yearning for love but on the whole not giving/getting a lot of it (perhaps this is the point)

a fact: this trilogy was suppressed when published in 1968 and became an underground classic – only in 2005 was an authorised edition finally released in France

 

want to read Love, Anger, Madness? visit here