The Wine of Astonishment
Bolo is a champion stickfighter, tall, good-looking, the bravest of all the young men in Bonasse. When, time and time again, he sees his people humiliated by change and American troops, his instincts as a leader come to the fore. The stand he makes, however, takes bizarre and tra... read full description below.
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Full details for this title
| Interest Age |
All ages |
| Reading Age |
All ages |
| NBS Text |
General & Literary Fiction |
| ONIX Text |
General/trade;Young adult;Primary & secondary/elementary & high school |
|
| Number of Pages |
160 |
| Dimensions |
Width: 126mm
Height: 198mm
Spine: 11mm |
| Weight |
135g |
|
| Dewey Code |
813 |
| Catalogue Code |
Not specified |
Description of this Book
This is an energetic, very unusual, above all, enlightening novel;the author's best yet. - The Financial Times A powerful and moving chronicle of the different ways in which members of a small Trinidadian community, Bonasse, hold on to their identity as they find themselves caught up in change and corruption. Bolo is a champion stick fighter, tall, good looking, and the fastest, strongest, and bravest of al the young men in Bonasse. When time and time again he sees his people humiliated by American troops, his instincts as a leader prevail. But the stand he makes takes on bizarre and tragic forms. Introduction by Marjorie Thorpe.
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Awards & Reviews
| NZ Review |
?This is an energetic, very unusual, above all, enlightening novel; the author's best yet.?-The Financial Times |
| US Review |
Brief episodes - from during and just after World War II - in the Trinidad village of Bonasse, where narrator Eva watches three men deal in contrasting ways with the encroaching presence of civilization. Eva's husband Bee, poor farmer and dedicated preacher, suffers mightily - watching the village take on Yankee-sleazy ways during the war, having his Spiritual Baptist church declared illegal. ( If we clap hands and catch the Spirit, the police could arrest us. One day we was Baptist, the next day we is criminals. ) So the last straw comes when one of Bee's sons decides to become a policeman: at last the gentle, law-abiding farmer/preacher is driven to fight back a little - with Eva celebrating the illegal burst of worship ( how we rise, how we rise up, how we dance and sing and how we break the law like the law was nothing ). Meanwhile, Bee and Eva's childhood friend Ivan Morton takes the assimilationist, climbing route. He turns Catholic, goes to college, marries a light-skinned girl (after leaving poor dark Eulalie with a baby), gets rich and posh, and eventually becomes the man to talk for us - a black voice on the Legislative Council. But Ivan is vexingly slow to do anything about the Spiritual Baptist ban, infuriating Bee with his failure to understand that to free the church is to free us. Again and again, in fact, the villagers are betrayed by the politicians, by the farce of pseudo-democracy: We really blind not to see that to these people we is just a joke that come in fashion once every five years when they come with pen and paper and take our names, promising to bring down the moon and the stars, feting us on rum and roti so we could ride their car on election morning and mark a X next to their name. And another childhood friend, wild Bolo, embodies the anti-colonial refusal to give up his manness without a struggle : he feverishly clings to a tribal-warrior image, confronting both the authorities and his fellow villagers at every turn, this recklessness and vexation and wickedness boiling up in him - until committing a terrible crime, sacrificing himself to awaken the village. Lovelace (The Schoolmaster, 1968) doesn't quite succeed in ennobling Bolo's crazed violence with the theme of cultural integrity. And Eva, though an often-eloquent narrator (in muted dialect), is herself a blank-faced character. Still: vivid glimpses of a village in anguished transition - stark, bitterly humorous, impassioned. (Kirkus Reviews) |
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Author's Bio
There is no author biography for this title.
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