Salt: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Salt is a rich, lyrical multi-storied novel of the Caribbean
Review: The novel Salt (Faber 1996) has won the 1997 Commonwealth Writer's Prize which probably comes as no surprise to the Caribbean reader, for Earl Lovelace is a highly acclaimed and tried writer from Trinidad. He is noted for a profoundly lyrical and ecstatic style which imbues the ordinary with the magic of hope. Ensconsed in the landscape of the island, the novel Salt weaves the stories of some familiar characters like Miss Myrtle and Bango with some new and yet untold stories, particularly those of Caribbean politicians hailing from a rainbow of ethnic backgrounds. These men have been given a mandate after independence to change the social structure of the island, but are shown to be ineffectual, bombastic, idealistic, confused. Lovelace' touch is as usual however compassionate. He is deeply insightful of the misfit between the aspirations of political figures and the resources of the island, which are rooted in his narrative with a connection to Africa. This is embodied in the figure of an old stickfighter Bango who knows and tells the stories of the island, but who is also shown to point a way forward with his annual multi-ethnic parade of children. Bango carries the weight of the island's past with a conviction of his own belief in the value of a community of feeling, which makes the politician's plans all the more heavy, foreign, absurd, misguided. And so, contrasting village folk with the urban politician, a characteristic distinction made in Caribbean and African literature, Lovelace writes urgently of the need to recover the past in a way which can fill the present more meaningfully, to erase the loss which came with the forced movement of peoples across the Atlantic, to even come to re-remember that there has been that loss. This central narrative is spun around another one of the relationship between women and men, and between mothers and sons. The men appear in the active dreams of the women, especially the single women. Yet the women in the everyday world are seen to support, advise, guide the men. The mutualities within these relationships as evoked in Salt is perhaps not politically correct yet is conveyed as a reality nevertheless. It is hard to capture in this short review the depth of feeling that Lovelace brings to these characters, in their small actions, their few words, and their large as life troubles. This book is therefore highly recommended to those interested in new literature of change, protest, and celebration