Review by Booklist Review
Sparse and lyrical, this collection of short stories reflects Cliff's Caribbean American heritage, providing cutting insights into two cultures. The simple island life has complex undercurrents--pained relationships between men and women, disappointments in life. Cliff shows oppression in paradise, the oppression of everyone having something to say, the wilting comments, a lack of privacy in a place where it is not surprising to run across people who are "dead stamp" in their resemblance to you. Her portraits of life in the U.S. are no less cutting, revealing alienation and small cultural frictions that leave wide gaps. A recurring theme throughout the collection is the disturbing news that reached the islands and permeated black consciousness in the U.S., namely, the murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Cliff's economy of words conveys the heftiness of human relations, male and female, black and white. (Reviewed April 1, 1998)0395901294Vanessa Bush
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A wispy second collection (after Bodies of Water, 1990) of 11 often inchoate stories from the Jamaican-born author of, among others, Free Enterprise (1993). Mostly told in present tense and dominated by brief sentence fragments, these are expressions of cultural and ethnic dislocation and conflict whose protagonists are, generally, Caribbeans either possessed by visions of American wealth and security (as in the title piece) or straggling to understand the imperfect fulfillment of their fantasies once they've emigrated. Cliff's prose is assured and rhythmic; but there's virtually no dramatic tension in the majority of these sketches (several really can't be called stories). Some verge on sociological reportage (""Apache Tears""); a few seem autobiographical (""Stan's Speed Shop,"" ""Wartime,"" and especially a tale of former lovers' reunited: ""Art History""). But the most frustrating inclusion is ""A Public Woman,"" which, though fascinating in its elliptical account of a courtesan's murder a century ago, is clearly only a prƿcis--Cliff's notes, if you will--of a story she hasn't written yet. Vivid descriptions help, as do recurring elements--such as the use of American movies as examples of possessions and states of being to which her frequently indigent characters aspire (""Some of our best times are spent in the dark, thrilled by the certainty that in the dark anything can happen""). Accordingly, Cliff succeeds best with the nicely developed ""Monster,"" about an ardent newlywed determined to bond with his Jamaican bride's family by stubbornly completing a screening of the classic horror film Frankenstein--even after the theater catches fire. Better yet is the volume's opening story, ""Transactions,"" which traces the grimly comic consequences of an American traveler's purchase of a defiant young girl from her impoverished family. Apart from these two, the momentum is essentially downhill in a disappointing patchwork publication from a writer who's capable of much better work than this. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
