Novel
God's Angry Babies
Ian Strachan · 1997
Synopsis
In the 1980s, in Santa Maria, a Caribbean country independent for some twenty years and governed by a corrupt party that resurfaces the roads before every election, Tree Bodie grows up in the streets of Pompey Village, far from the luxury hotels. The novel follows his escapades, his family's conflicts, his mother Maureen, his elder brother Firsborn, his friend Elsa, and his uncertain involvement in politics, when he is tempted to join the party in exchange for a scholarship to the United States.
Context
Published in 1997 by Lynne Rienner, this first novel alternates the voices of the author, of Tree and of his mother. The review in World Walk points to the political corruption, the colonial legacy and the endurance of ordinary people, and stresses the room given to the Bahamian language, between dialect, letters, newspaper articles and third-person narrative. Santa Maria stands for the Bahamas under a borrowed name.
Who it is for
For reading a Bahamian coming-of-age novel about the politics of a young nation, carried by the language of the archipelago.
Prizes and reception
World Walk finds its construction awkward at times but its characters full of life, and notes that Bahamian novels are rare in bookshops in the United States.
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