Review by Booklist Review
In the face of unbearable conditions in China during the late 1800s, Lowe came to the island of Jamaica seeking new opportunities. Now, after 30-some years on the island, living as man and wife with Miss Sylvie, a light-skinned black woman, Lowe, proprietor of a modest grocery store, finds his life unraveling when the shop is burned to the ground. Initially disconsolate over the tragedy, Lowe begins to face the many losses incurred over the years--loss of identity, history, language, an estranged daughter--and a dream emerges of a more authentic life, one that includes building a cultural meeting place for the Chinese, to be called the Pagoda. The story of Lowe's life unfolds slowly to reveal the mysteries of a disguised identity, past violence, betrayal, and survival. Lowe eventually recognizes a household of secretive others, including Miss Sylvie, each with a dark and mysterious past. Jamaican-born Powell (A Small Gathering of Bones, 1994) is an author of exceptional artistry and insight whose writing is extremely rich in sensual imagery. --Grace Fill
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in Jamaica in 1893, Powell's anguished if not entirely persuasive third novel (after A Small Gathering of Bones) tells the story of Lowe, an aging Chinese shopkeeper whose 35-year marriage of convenience to a lesbian octoroon named Miss Sylvie becomes a marriage of love as the couple faces the secrets in their pasts. After 12 years of estrangement between Lowe and their daughter, Elizabeth, he decides to write her a letter explaining the hidden origins of their family (which involve his stowaway immigration from China to Jamaica on a slave ship during the 1850s). Before he can finish the letter, however, his shop burns down, killing Cecil, the white man who smuggled him into the country and sexually abused him, but who also set him up in business. Freed of his secret debts to Cecil, Lowe seizes the chance to start his life anew. On the property where his shop once stood, he builds The Pagoda, a school and meeting house for the other Chinese on the islandbut not before facing up to the loss of his livelihood, his estrangement from his Chinese heritage and the overriding secret of his family life. Saturated with kaleidoscopic, erotic description and driven by a keen awareness of race and class, this lush historical work, despite distant and uneven characterization and mysteriously disappearing subplots, opens a door on to an exotic, imaginary world where sex roles and racial tensions are tossed aside in the struggle to belong and, at the same time, to cling to ancestral traditions. Agent, Sterling Lord. BOMC selection. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Powell's (A Small Gathering of Bones, LJ 11/1/94) third book is a complicated historical novel about a young Chinese woman who escapes her marriage by stowing away on a ship to Jamaica. She is unaware that the ship holds 500 kidnapped or otherwise coerced Chinese men bound for forced labor there. Because Chinese women are not allowed to emigrate to the New World, Lau A-Yin disguises herself as a man. For reasons that are gradually revealed to the reader, she maintains that disguise for the next 30 years. Powell explores gender identification, family relationships, and the influence that both fate and freely made decisions can have on the course of an individual's life. She also describes a relatively undocumented historical episodethe immigration of Chinese men to Jamaica to provide the cheap labor needed for the survival of the sugar plantations after the emancipation of the slaves. An unusual story, it will keep the reader engaged. Recommended for public and academic libraries.Rebecca A. Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Like actors who wear masks not only to hide their identities but also to create new ones, the characters in this luminously rendered third novel (Small Gathering of Bones, not reviewed, etc.) by Jamaican-born Powell are not what they seem. The story is set in the Jamaica of the late 1800s when poverty was endemic, whites were in control, and racial tensions were exacerbated by the presence of indentured East Indian and Chinese laborers. Married to white Miss Sylvie, the Chinese Lowe, who runs a small store, had always been good to his customers. But one night as he started to write a letter to his daughter, Liz, the shop was burned down with a white man, Cecil, trapped inside. Depressed, Lowe couldnt continue the letter, of course, a letter intended to tell Liz the truth about her birth and the past. Now, Lowes life has no purpose, and his long masquerade seems even more futile as he finds himself recalling his childhood in China and the closeness to his father that ended when he was a teenager and his father betrayed him. He recalls how he became a stowaway, and how he was rescued, only to be raped by Cecil, the ship's captain, who discovered that Lowe was really a woman. In Jamaica, she again became Lowe, a man, set up with a shop and wife by Cecil. Lowe's despair eases only when he decides to build a pagoda for the island Chinese, but he now finds Sylvie has her own secrets to share. As confessions and confusions multiply, Lowe has an affair with Joyce, a black woman-but Sylvie, haunted by her past, runs away. Now Lowe, missing Sylvie, whom he realizes he truly loves, finally writes to Liz. Suffused with grief and regret, the letter tells his story and reveals his conviction that hes never lived fully but ``always through some kind of veil.'' The ending is quiet but an appropriately elegiac counterpoint to the preceding emotional turmoil. Impressively conceived. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
