ABOUT THE BOOK

Easter, 1981. With Jamaica in a state of emergency, the Landing family gathers to bury one of its own. For Monica Landing, who had not spoken to her daughter in fifteen years, the death of Lana is the cruelest kind of loss. For Lana's younger sister, Jean, it is an incomprehensible tragedy. All she knows is that her beloved homeland, with its blue mountains and rich African rhythms, holds no future for her.

But flight means crossing a landscape where soldiers turned executioners and armed gangs rule. It means making her way through the memories that engulf her, with perhaps the only man she has ever loved by her side. In this time of apocalypse, past and present merge in Jean's remembrances of childhood; in the guiding visions that have always been with her; in the voices of her ancestors that tell of hardship and struggle, love and survival - voices of both the living and the dead.

Told from a multiplicity of perspectives, The True History of Paradise captures the grace, beauty, and brutality that are indelible parts of the Jamaican experience. The story of three women born into a divided, troubled paradise becomes the history of a country, of generations of wanderers coming together in a place that can neither sustain nor be sustained by them, but which will shape them forever. Epic in scope, scored in a rich, lyrical patois, it is a powerful and moving debut by a gifted author.

Margaret Cezair-Thompson was born in Jamaica and currently teaches literature and creative writing at Wellesley College. The True History of Paradise is her first novel.

---

Here are some readers' thoughts on The True History of Paradise:

"The True History of Paradise by Margaret Cezair-Thompson is a book that I would take with me to a desert island together with A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Cezair-Thompson's book made me live the life of that complex family on the heavenly island of Jamaica as if I were a part of it. Her characters are full-blooded, her narration is original, her description of Jamaica is enough to make you want to go and live there. And above all, her book shows that, ultimately, we are all one human familiy, regardless of race, ethnicity and religion.

It is a book one can read over and over again with a feeling of coming home to people with whom we share the joys and tragedies of living."

Eva and Manes Lichtenberg,
163 Pine Street Homosassa,
Florida 34446
USA

 

---

"The Paradise of the title is the Caribbean island of Jamaica and as in the biblical paradise, evil lurks there too. The time is 1981 when Jamaica was in a virtual state of anarchy, with a Government in crisis, marauding gangs roaming the streets and a complete breakdown in law and order. The main protagonist is Jean Landing, a young woman about to flee the island to her American lover and the safe haven of the United States.

As she drives north across the island to a private airfield, the story of her family and her world is unfolded. It is a rich tapestry of the racial mix of Jamaica, the early history of Spanish conquest followed by British occupation up to independence in 1961. The legacy of slavery is ever present in its mainly African population mixed with the blood of the white settlers and the Indian and Chinese labour imported after slavery was abolished. Skin shade (pale) and hair quality (straight) are big factors in determining physical beauty and social status now changing in post independence Jamaica.

The novel covers a huge canvas embracing the extended family of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. The spirit voices of some of the ancestors are heard too in the on-going debate of whether to stay in the failed paradise or to escape from its destructive forces. The book is part literary novel and popular fiction which sometimes throws the reader. Nevertheless, it is a great read - there will surely be a sequel and it would make a great TV mini series, a Caribbean Dallas or Dynasty."

Reader, Raheny Library Reading Group.

 

---

"My heart sank when I saw the lengthy family tree at the beginning of this novel, and indeed I did get a bit lost among the numerous ancestors of Jean Landing, the heroine. However, I soon got caught up in this sweeping panorama of the history of Jamaica (the beauty of whose landscape contrasted so poignantly with the savagery of some of its inhabitants) and this very extended family, and was quite enthralled by it.

There was much in this book to enjoy: the characters - tough, funny, moving - of whom Jean's mother Monica, father Roy, grandmother Mary, Aunt Daphne and Irene perhaps stand out; clear and vivid writing, conveying the feel of place and atmosphere, the fear during the time of unrest; the history of Jamaica. There were so many varied strands coming together to make this family - Indian, German, English - as to make one wonder what it felt like to have come from so many different kinds of people. There was the question of racial differences being accepted or being a consideration between varying shades of brown. There was love in its many aspects. All these ideas were brought together very skilfully I thought.

Maybe there is a little too much to digest comfortably, but I thought it a very impressive first novel and of the four books on the short list that I have read this is the one I would nominate to win.

I finished it wondering what would happen to Jean in the future. Perhaps the author may give us a sequel some time in the future."

Member Raheny Library Reading Group.