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The Gospel According to Cane
Beverley Cottrell had a dream life: a prestigious job, a beautiful husband and new baby boy. But then, one winter afternoon, when her son was barely a few weeks old, Malakay was kidnapped from a parked car. Despite a media campaign, a full police investigation and the offer of a reward, he was never found.
Two decades later, Beverley believes that she has finally pieced her life together — until a young man starts appearing wherever she goes. One dark evening the stalker gets past her security door and calls through her letterbox. He tells her not to be scared. He tells her that he is Malakay, her son.
Courttia Newland is a novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Critically acclaimed novels include Snakeskin, The Dying Wish and The Scholar. He is the co-editor of IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain and The Global Village (with Monique Roffey). Newland was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Alfred Fagon Award and the Frank O' Connor Award. He lives in London.
Two decades later, Beverley believes that she has finally pieced her life together — until a young man starts appearing wherever she goes. One dark evening the stalker gets past her security door and calls through her letterbox. He tells her not to be scared. He tells her that he is Malakay, her son.
Courttia Newland is a novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Critically acclaimed novels include Snakeskin, The Dying Wish and The Scholar. He is the co-editor of IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain and The Global Village (with Monique Roffey). Newland was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Alfred Fagon Award and the Frank O' Connor Award. He lives in London.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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About the author
Courttia Newland
40 books75 followersCourttia Newland is a British writer of Jamaican and Bajan heritage.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
December 29, 2014
This may be the closest thing I've read so far to the current crop of popular domestic thrillers. One of an over-large haul of books I bought in the Kindle sale last Christmas, I may never have got round to it if I weren't a) taking UK Black History Month as a prompt to read several relevant books I've had for a while, and b) too frazzled to realistically expect to finish a doorstop like Staying Power.
The Gospel According to Cane is narrated by Beverley, whose only child, Malakay, was snatched as a baby twenty years ago and has never been seen since. She's a part-time teacher of excluded kids, divorced, with some capital from a house sale, and lives frugally in an ex council flat, having gradually got herself together psychologically. She appears rather lonely apart from an older neighbour who’s a kind of substitute aunt, her counsellor, and her friend-with-benefits, a policeman she met via her son’s case. The class and economic contrasts of her area are very familiar as the sort of places friends and I have lived: it’s still fairly common for kids in hoodies to hang around the street, it’s far from swish, yet there are also a few Abel and Cole veg boxes on doorsteps.
One day a lad, the same age as Malakay would be now, starts loitering around Beverley’s home, after a while they talk, and he claims to be her son. Her openness to accepting him so fast reflects the desperation she’d buried, the enduring son-shaped hole in her life, and also tricky contrasts of professional and private. If in your work you need to give people the benefit of the doubt as part of helping them, to what extent do or should you apply that in other areas of your life? Not something Beverley wrestles with personally, but others clearly think she should.
At first there’s quite a lot of time spent on aspects of Beverley's life that don't involve the boy - it's more realistic than books where all other scenes of a character's life stop in response to something like this, and makes Beverley more human. Later the story starts to seem rushed and random, as if it needed another revision, and had been trying to keep the word/page count down. The writing style is sometimes poetic and philosophical and sometimes straightforward, even clunky, in the manner of popular fiction; interesting and slightly unusual - but perhaps disjointed. I have a feeling that the book is a fusion of literary fiction, commercial women’s fiction and urban fiction, but I know so little about the latter it’s hard to say. (Beverley references three of its authors as reading suggestions for a student: Chester Himes, Donald Goines, Iceberg Slim.)
The title The Gospel According to Cane is linked to dream sequences which happen in fields of cane sugar and Beverley’s description of her and her mother’s skin tone as “cane”. At one point she articulates a sense of guilt about having ancestors who would have owned slaves, or lorded it over others as light-skinned black people in the West Indies, and at other times also dreams about being a slave girl. Whilst I have some personal sense of “being both”, bad and good in one, partly descended from nationalities who've been enemies, there are obviously nuances here that I don’t get because I don’t have [much familiarity with] the writer's and characters' background.
Several GR reviewers have used the word ‘disorganised’ about this novel, and I’d have to agree. Possibly the formatting of the ebook made it worse, where flashbacks in time or dream sequences were sometimes separated from the rest of the text with spacing, sometimes not. In well-written novels, sense emerges from scenes like those over time, a picture of the character’s life builds up, but it didn’t here; I wasn’t entirely sure whether her childhood had been spent in the West Indies, London or both, and it was never clear when in time certain things took place. The beginning of the book mentions that it's Beverley's journal, which arguably explains some of the incoherence and paragraphs flowing into one another, but with this kind of writing - not really experimental, perhaps I'm too attached to conventions - things need to be made clearer. There are a number of detailed references to anatomy of the brain which weren’t tied up to the rest of the story; most were separate paragraphs but some were in dream sequences, whilst there was no sign of Beverley ever having studied medicine, neuroscience, nursing etc, formally or informally. Given that she never personally brings up the issue of DNA tests, and her responses to those who do, she seems detached from the world of science and to view it as potentially alienating and unempathic.
At 63% there was a flashback scene which I expected to be followed by the sort of writing you get when a narrator is revealed to be unreliable and a psychopath, but it wasn’t. It was probably meant to indicate that Beverley had gone quite far off the rails in the past, and that she had the potential to fall that far again, but in retrospect was too far out of character to make sense with anything else about her. Nor did she appear to come from the sort of background where it may have been relatively normal, even if she does realise it’s frowned on now
A fight near the end of the novel didn’t make much sense either – probably the least clear fight sequence I’ve ever read - although I read it three times, including after finishing the book. . Stuff about what happened afterwards would surely be likely material for her to write down in a journal, but a lot of it isn't there. It often seems as if the diary idea had been forgotten later in the book, and the denouement skips to a final scene just like a popular novel.
For this kind of plot and style, the story also had insufficient conclusion. Most of the problems with the book and characters struck me as stuff that needed rewriting and editing, rather than anything someone should criticise characters for as if they were real. I initially gave this 3 stars as it never annoyed me in the way of the few books I’ve rated 2 stars, and there may be an allegorical subtext I've missed. But I changed it as this appears to be one of the worst structured books I've read in a while. I'm still open to the idea that I may have missed reasons for its being the way it is.
The Gospel According to Cane is narrated by Beverley, whose only child, Malakay, was snatched as a baby twenty years ago and has never been seen since. She's a part-time teacher of excluded kids, divorced, with some capital from a house sale, and lives frugally in an ex council flat, having gradually got herself together psychologically. She appears rather lonely apart from an older neighbour who’s a kind of substitute aunt, her counsellor, and her friend-with-benefits, a policeman she met via her son’s case. The class and economic contrasts of her area are very familiar as the sort of places friends and I have lived: it’s still fairly common for kids in hoodies to hang around the street, it’s far from swish, yet there are also a few Abel and Cole veg boxes on doorsteps.
One day a lad, the same age as Malakay would be now, starts loitering around Beverley’s home, after a while they talk, and he claims to be her son. Her openness to accepting him so fast reflects the desperation she’d buried, the enduring son-shaped hole in her life, and also tricky contrasts of professional and private. If in your work you need to give people the benefit of the doubt as part of helping them, to what extent do or should you apply that in other areas of your life? Not something Beverley wrestles with personally, but others clearly think she should.
At first there’s quite a lot of time spent on aspects of Beverley's life that don't involve the boy - it's more realistic than books where all other scenes of a character's life stop in response to something like this, and makes Beverley more human. Later the story starts to seem rushed and random, as if it needed another revision, and had been trying to keep the word/page count down. The writing style is sometimes poetic and philosophical and sometimes straightforward, even clunky, in the manner of popular fiction; interesting and slightly unusual - but perhaps disjointed. I have a feeling that the book is a fusion of literary fiction, commercial women’s fiction and urban fiction, but I know so little about the latter it’s hard to say. (Beverley references three of its authors as reading suggestions for a student: Chester Himes, Donald Goines, Iceberg Slim.)
The title The Gospel According to Cane is linked to dream sequences which happen in fields of cane sugar and Beverley’s description of her and her mother’s skin tone as “cane”. At one point she articulates a sense of guilt about having ancestors who would have owned slaves, or lorded it over others as light-skinned black people in the West Indies, and at other times also dreams about being a slave girl. Whilst I have some personal sense of “being both”, bad and good in one, partly descended from nationalities who've been enemies, there are obviously nuances here that I don’t get because I don’t have [much familiarity with] the writer's and characters' background.
Several GR reviewers have used the word ‘disorganised’ about this novel, and I’d have to agree. Possibly the formatting of the ebook made it worse, where flashbacks in time or dream sequences were sometimes separated from the rest of the text with spacing, sometimes not. In well-written novels, sense emerges from scenes like those over time, a picture of the character’s life builds up, but it didn’t here; I wasn’t entirely sure whether her childhood had been spent in the West Indies, London or both, and it was never clear when in time certain things took place. The beginning of the book mentions that it's Beverley's journal, which arguably explains some of the incoherence and paragraphs flowing into one another, but with this kind of writing - not really experimental, perhaps I'm too attached to conventions - things need to be made clearer. There are a number of detailed references to anatomy of the brain which weren’t tied up to the rest of the story; most were separate paragraphs but some were in dream sequences, whilst there was no sign of Beverley ever having studied medicine, neuroscience, nursing etc, formally or informally. Given that she never personally brings up the issue of DNA tests, and her responses to those who do, she seems detached from the world of science and to view it as potentially alienating and unempathic.
At 63% there was a flashback scene which I expected to be followed by the sort of writing you get when a narrator is revealed to be unreliable and a psychopath, but it wasn’t. It was probably meant to indicate that Beverley had gone quite far off the rails in the past, and that she had the potential to fall that far again, but in retrospect was too far out of character to make sense with anything else about her. Nor did she appear to come from the sort of background where it may have been relatively normal, even if she does realise it’s frowned on now
A fight near the end of the novel didn’t make much sense either – probably the least clear fight sequence I’ve ever read - although I read it three times, including after finishing the book. . Stuff about what happened afterwards would surely be likely material for her to write down in a journal, but a lot of it isn't there. It often seems as if the diary idea had been forgotten later in the book, and the denouement skips to a final scene just like a popular novel.
For this kind of plot and style, the story also had insufficient conclusion. Most of the problems with the book and characters struck me as stuff that needed rewriting and editing, rather than anything someone should criticise characters for as if they were real. I initially gave this 3 stars as it never annoyed me in the way of the few books I’ve rated 2 stars, and there may be an allegorical subtext I've missed. But I changed it as this appears to be one of the worst structured books I've read in a while. I'm still open to the idea that I may have missed reasons for its being the way it is.
May 19, 2013
My rating = 3.5
My thoughts:
• I read this book after reading The Light Between Oceans – which deals with a couple claiming a baby (a couple of months old) washes up on their isolated lighthouse island and does not notify anyone even when they know there is a grieving mother missing her baby. The Gospel According to Cane also deals with a missing baby – this time an eight month old baby. But the books were different in format and focus.
• Every now and then I read a book that I have enjoyed but just not sure how to articulate why it was a gripping read and The Gospel According to Cane is one of those books, especially since telling more than a few casual statements would ruin the experience for future readers.
• It has been twenty years since Beveley’s son Malakay’s son was kidnapped from a parked car and her world/outlook on life was destroyed. Beverley has learned techniques to make it through the day – one which is writing in her journal, and this is the format used to tell this story.
• In the early pages in the journal we learn that 46 yr old Beverley is a wounded person – mentally and spiritually, (well at least she is to me) leads a very simple austere life, has limited contact with others (has a neighbor friend who checks on her and a one of the police officers on the kidnapping case who occasionally checks on her, and she has her students from a community center). Beverley has spotted a young man “stalking” her in the marketplace and begins to believe that she is her missing son. Through the journal entries – which at times seem like rambles as there are entries about her dreams, thoughts on pain and reality, is the story of the noticing the boy, taking the boy into her home, and the reactions the limited people in her life have to her unwavering acceptance of the boy without explanation and proof.
• The writing is intriguing and has a compelling nature that kept me reading until the end. In fact I read this book in one night. The journal entries are intimate and heartbreaking
• While I cannot even begin to imagine the pain of losing a child (baby) but it is also obvious to me that Beverley never received the proper help to accept the reality of her loss and her grief was the only thing that got her through. And when the stalking boy says he is her son – her instincts are that she does not want to lose him again and not about the reality of her safety, or what seems like logical next steps to establish who this boy is.
• I would have liked to learn more about her dreams – as they subtly hinted at the historical issues – master/slave relationships, the rules of the cane industry, the nuances of blacks who became privileged, skin color.
• I thought the author did a good job using the changing urban background and the social mores of the younger generation in this environment and balancing against the fears of the older generation.
• The characters are finely drawn and when peeling back the layers to their inner lives we get to see that we are all affected by our own particular pain. The emotional tension between characters/events is well-played and is the strength of this tale.
• The ending was a little off putting to me.
My thoughts:
• I read this book after reading The Light Between Oceans – which deals with a couple claiming a baby (a couple of months old) washes up on their isolated lighthouse island and does not notify anyone even when they know there is a grieving mother missing her baby. The Gospel According to Cane also deals with a missing baby – this time an eight month old baby. But the books were different in format and focus.
• Every now and then I read a book that I have enjoyed but just not sure how to articulate why it was a gripping read and The Gospel According to Cane is one of those books, especially since telling more than a few casual statements would ruin the experience for future readers.
• It has been twenty years since Beveley’s son Malakay’s son was kidnapped from a parked car and her world/outlook on life was destroyed. Beverley has learned techniques to make it through the day – one which is writing in her journal, and this is the format used to tell this story.
• In the early pages in the journal we learn that 46 yr old Beverley is a wounded person – mentally and spiritually, (well at least she is to me) leads a very simple austere life, has limited contact with others (has a neighbor friend who checks on her and a one of the police officers on the kidnapping case who occasionally checks on her, and she has her students from a community center). Beverley has spotted a young man “stalking” her in the marketplace and begins to believe that she is her missing son. Through the journal entries – which at times seem like rambles as there are entries about her dreams, thoughts on pain and reality, is the story of the noticing the boy, taking the boy into her home, and the reactions the limited people in her life have to her unwavering acceptance of the boy without explanation and proof.
• The writing is intriguing and has a compelling nature that kept me reading until the end. In fact I read this book in one night. The journal entries are intimate and heartbreaking
• While I cannot even begin to imagine the pain of losing a child (baby) but it is also obvious to me that Beverley never received the proper help to accept the reality of her loss and her grief was the only thing that got her through. And when the stalking boy says he is her son – her instincts are that she does not want to lose him again and not about the reality of her safety, or what seems like logical next steps to establish who this boy is.
• I would have liked to learn more about her dreams – as they subtly hinted at the historical issues – master/slave relationships, the rules of the cane industry, the nuances of blacks who became privileged, skin color.
• I thought the author did a good job using the changing urban background and the social mores of the younger generation in this environment and balancing against the fears of the older generation.
• The characters are finely drawn and when peeling back the layers to their inner lives we get to see that we are all affected by our own particular pain. The emotional tension between characters/events is well-played and is the strength of this tale.
• The ending was a little off putting to me.
January 10, 2020
10. A book written in Europe: The Gospel According to Cane by Courttia Newland
List Progress: 2/30
I am a sucker for the overlap between family dramas and mystery/crime dramas. Shows like Broadchurch and The Killing introduce normal nuclear families and immediately crack them open with unspeakable trauma and I eat it up. The Gospel According to Cane, a 2014 novel by British writer Courttia Newland, takes a slightly different approach in that the trauma is old and, if not healed, deeply scabbed over. Beverley, a 40-something woman in London, had her infant son kidnapped twenty years ago, and she has been a festering wound of a person ever since. When she starts being stalked by a young man, that wound is reopened when he approaches her and claims to be her long-lost son. She immediately believes him, rejecting everyone else in her life who questions that possibility, asks for proof, or thinks she is being duped, and she becomes so immersed in this possibility that it is obvious that the mix of pain and frantic hope is destroying her.
That’s a lot of emotion to hang on a story. Unfortunately, Newland’s structure leaves something to be desired and the emotional sweeps end up feeling under-served by the story and characters holding them up.
The Gospel According to Cane is presented as Beverley’s diary and is written out of sequential order, snatches of memories, dreams and to-do lists interspersed with narrative scenes. (Dialogue is even integrated into the prose rather than set off with quotation marks, which takes a while to get used to as a reader.) This works well in the beginning when we are getting a lush depiction of Beverley’s mind, her life, and her conflicted feelings about her heritage and privilege, as a light-skinned middle-class woman of Bajan descent living in the UK and working with underprivileged youths. But as the book goes on, it feels like Newland is stalling, holding off vital plot points until the last possible second and forcing characters to stay stagnant for long stretches of time so that they don’t rush into the next story beats. Then the payoff isn’t all that great and you find yourself wondering why you waited so long to get here. In order for the plot to function, many characters have to ignore obvious things, avoid natural conversations, and act very unnaturally, which leaves a very flimsy structure to build around.
This book has a lot of lovely moments, including some genuinely heartbreaking details and writing. But it feels like it needs another draft and an outside perspective willing to push some of the character arcs. Why does Beverley’s neighbor not confront her for so long? Why does Beverley’s police officer boyfriend go along with her absurd requests? So many questions, and while some are clearly left unanswered for thematic reasons, some really should have been pushed back against. The question can still be there, it’s all a matter of how you justify it.
Would I Recommend It: Not really, but there is some interesting stuff here.
List Progress: 2/30
I am a sucker for the overlap between family dramas and mystery/crime dramas. Shows like Broadchurch and The Killing introduce normal nuclear families and immediately crack them open with unspeakable trauma and I eat it up. The Gospel According to Cane, a 2014 novel by British writer Courttia Newland, takes a slightly different approach in that the trauma is old and, if not healed, deeply scabbed over. Beverley, a 40-something woman in London, had her infant son kidnapped twenty years ago, and she has been a festering wound of a person ever since. When she starts being stalked by a young man, that wound is reopened when he approaches her and claims to be her long-lost son. She immediately believes him, rejecting everyone else in her life who questions that possibility, asks for proof, or thinks she is being duped, and she becomes so immersed in this possibility that it is obvious that the mix of pain and frantic hope is destroying her.
That’s a lot of emotion to hang on a story. Unfortunately, Newland’s structure leaves something to be desired and the emotional sweeps end up feeling under-served by the story and characters holding them up.
The Gospel According to Cane is presented as Beverley’s diary and is written out of sequential order, snatches of memories, dreams and to-do lists interspersed with narrative scenes. (Dialogue is even integrated into the prose rather than set off with quotation marks, which takes a while to get used to as a reader.) This works well in the beginning when we are getting a lush depiction of Beverley’s mind, her life, and her conflicted feelings about her heritage and privilege, as a light-skinned middle-class woman of Bajan descent living in the UK and working with underprivileged youths. But as the book goes on, it feels like Newland is stalling, holding off vital plot points until the last possible second and forcing characters to stay stagnant for long stretches of time so that they don’t rush into the next story beats. Then the payoff isn’t all that great and you find yourself wondering why you waited so long to get here. In order for the plot to function, many characters have to ignore obvious things, avoid natural conversations, and act very unnaturally, which leaves a very flimsy structure to build around.
This book has a lot of lovely moments, including some genuinely heartbreaking details and writing. But it feels like it needs another draft and an outside perspective willing to push some of the character arcs. Why does Beverley’s neighbor not confront her for so long? Why does Beverley’s police officer boyfriend go along with her absurd requests? So many questions, and while some are clearly left unanswered for thematic reasons, some really should have been pushed back against. The question can still be there, it’s all a matter of how you justify it.
Would I Recommend It: Not really, but there is some interesting stuff here.
May 30, 2013
Sometimes you read a book description that screams...'I want to read this book!' The Gospel According to Cane was one such book for me...unfortunately, my expectations were too high and it didn't deliver. Don't get me wrong...it was well-written...some passages very vivid, lyrical...but the characters...the mother nor the 'supposed' son ever drew me in. They felt cardboard/stilted and I felt emotionally detached from both of them. Also, I didn't like the ending. I needed closure and I don't believe I received it. While I would read another book by this author (to give her the benefit of the doubt and because I believe she's a good writer...I just wasn't enthralled by The Gospel According to Cane), I probably will not be reading a sequel. I'm done with this storyline and these characters. If there's a sequel can someone read it and let me know who Will really is? :)
November 19, 2020
Beautiful, powerful and poignant
March 4, 2013
I won this book through a Goodreads giveaway.
The plot was interesting and I had high hopes for the novel; however, the style of writing was too irritating to enjoy.
The book begins with a first person preface that it was written as a journal and not intended as a story, but if it turns out to be a story, so be it. Bearing this in mind, the writing was still exceptionally unorganized and "journal entries" were completely random. I read with the expectation that the random journal entries would come together, but they did not. Additionally, it was difficult to comprehend journal entries were flashbacks, which were dreams, which were present, and which were just outright random.
The most distracting element was the author's lack of use of quotation marks in dialogue, with the exception of one or two areas. It was difficult to follow conversation and determine who the speaker was.
The UK "street slang" was difficult to understand and interpret.
The ending provided about 25% of the closure I would have liked.
Overall, the story itself was decent, and there were perhaps two exciting sections in the book, but the writing unorganized and confusing writing style and the way the writing varied so far from the plot at times was just frustrating, thus yielding a two-star review.
The plot was interesting and I had high hopes for the novel; however, the style of writing was too irritating to enjoy.
The book begins with a first person preface that it was written as a journal and not intended as a story, but if it turns out to be a story, so be it. Bearing this in mind, the writing was still exceptionally unorganized and "journal entries" were completely random. I read with the expectation that the random journal entries would come together, but they did not. Additionally, it was difficult to comprehend journal entries were flashbacks, which were dreams, which were present, and which were just outright random.
The most distracting element was the author's lack of use of quotation marks in dialogue, with the exception of one or two areas. It was difficult to follow conversation and determine who the speaker was.
The UK "street slang" was difficult to understand and interpret.
The ending provided about 25% of the closure I would have liked.
Overall, the story itself was decent, and there were perhaps two exciting sections in the book, but the writing unorganized and confusing writing style and the way the writing varied so far from the plot at times was just frustrating, thus yielding a two-star review.
May 13, 2014
I'm sorry but I don't know what this was but I can only describe it as a disaster. I was expecting something so different from what I got. The first half of the book was ok and contained passages that were written well but the second half of the book was incoherent for me. The main character Beverley was waco and kept doing things that didn't make sense. There were many things in this novel that were highly improbable and the author seemed compelled to keep adding more difficulty to the story line to some how stretch things. What happens when you try to stretch things? Everything gets watered down. It's really too bad because the storyline in itself was interesting idea but I didn't enjoy at all the way the story was turned and didn't enjoy or care about the characters. They were stereotypical and one dimensional.
March 6, 2018
Newland builds and maintains the tension throughout the novel, but I was left with several relevant questions. People portrayed as significant to Beverly (our narrator and main character) were abandoned, ends were left loose. Perhaps his intent, but I wish I had more answers.
May 3, 2013
A young man shows up claiming to be the protagonist's son, who was kidnapped as a baby. I became absorbed in this quickly, enjoying the sense of place in particular. Ten minutes after I'd finished it, I realized the plotting was really quite absurd in ways that are hard to overlook, but hey ho.
January 18, 2015
Pretty dull, a little non sensical and with a scene of extreme animal cruelty that neither added to the plot nor character development.
June 11, 2022
There are times when I am almost afraid of reaching the end of a novel because the most likely endings are going to be too disturbing or too painful. I delay reading the final few pages and then do so with baited breath. This was one of those experiences.
For all that the human being in me wanted a happy ever after ending, the confusion, torment and pain that Beverley goes through when her long lost baby son apparently turns up as a 20 year old black man seems like it has to end in tears. Is he even a good person, is he actually her son? The author describes this expertly and I felt totally engaged with mother and son - while also fully understanding the cautious, concerned reactions of those around them. Beverley admits to herself that she too has been conditioned by society’s perception of young black males and fears her maternal instincts are distorting her judgement.
For a relatively short novel this covers a lot of ground: birth and rebirth, loss and pain and healing, race and prejudice, fear and doubt and faith, and not least the role that writing can play in all of these themes.
I was really moved by this novel and definitely recommend it. I know some reviewers don’t like the ending. I actually did find it made sense. Pain and doubt and fear can not heal in a claustrophobic community full of negativity. The only solution has to be to rebuild starting from the very foundation
For all that the human being in me wanted a happy ever after ending, the confusion, torment and pain that Beverley goes through when her long lost baby son apparently turns up as a 20 year old black man seems like it has to end in tears. Is he even a good person, is he actually her son? The author describes this expertly and I felt totally engaged with mother and son - while also fully understanding the cautious, concerned reactions of those around them. Beverley admits to herself that she too has been conditioned by society’s perception of young black males and fears her maternal instincts are distorting her judgement.
For a relatively short novel this covers a lot of ground: birth and rebirth, loss and pain and healing, race and prejudice, fear and doubt and faith, and not least the role that writing can play in all of these themes.
I was really moved by this novel and definitely recommend it. I know some reviewers don’t like the ending. I actually did find it made sense. Pain and doubt and fear can not heal in a claustrophobic community full of negativity. The only solution has to be to rebuild starting from the very foundation
December 28, 2017
Having never read anything by the author, I wasn't sure what to think of the book. The blurb read like a thriller but what I ended up reading was something else; more along fiction.
I was engrossed by the first half but it soon lost its steam as the story became a bit muddled. I started thinking maybe I missed a few pages, as the author writes in flashbacks in between the present story, but upon re-reading a few pages realized that what I had read was correct and there seemed to be gaps along the story well at least to me.
I was engrossed by the first half but it soon lost its steam as the story became a bit muddled. I started thinking maybe I missed a few pages, as the author writes in flashbacks in between the present story, but upon re-reading a few pages realized that what I had read was correct and there seemed to be gaps along the story well at least to me.
December 5, 2021
Hold your kids and hug them and don't let go.
Even if you are not absolutely sure if they are yours...
This book took the inconceivable (well difficult and dangerous to consider) and made it feel mostly palpable. Made me wonder: what if a leap of faith is the only way out of a pit of madness.
Even if you are not absolutely sure if they are yours...
This book took the inconceivable (well difficult and dangerous to consider) and made it feel mostly palpable. Made me wonder: what if a leap of faith is the only way out of a pit of madness.
May 25, 2020
I was utterly gripped by this novel. The story kept me guessing and the exploration of the the central character's experiences was richly complex and moving. Plus the prose was exquisite. Highly recommended.
January 2, 2021
Read the book recently, I didn't like the ending read through the whole book and still don't know if he is really her son.
January 14, 2022
It's sort of hard to find a stopping place with no defined chapters in a book, but you really can't put this one down anyway so chapter breaks don't really matter.
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April 7, 2016The Gospel According to Cane shares its kernel with stories such as Martin Guerre, or Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrer – a stranger who turns up claiming to be a lost love one, in this case a child snatched when he was still a baby. Yet it contains much deeper resonances.
It is twenty years since Beverley Cottrell’s son, Malakay, was snatched, and although she has lost home, husband, job – she has managed to make a kind of life for herself, teaching creative writing to disadvantaged kids at a youth centre. But her frail balance is disturbed when she spots a young man in the street, staring at her, following her. Against the opposition of everyone around her, she becomes convinced that this is her son, returned to her.
The book is written as a series of almost haphazard journal entries by Beverley. In amongst the present day narrative are memories of her childhood, memories of her marriage and the loss of Malakay, dream sequences that take her back to the slavery era in the Caribbean, scientific analyses of pain perception – and a scattering of passages that only make sense when the book reaches its shocking climax.
The title appears to be a play on words. The Gospel According to Cane suggests both Cain, the brother of Abel, and the sugar cane harvested by the Caribbean slaves. Newland would thus seem to confront, head-on, the teaching of some white supremacist churches that the Mark of Cain, placed on him by God for the murder of his brother, was Black skin.
In Beverley’s dreams, she belongs to a family complicit in the slave trade. Despised by the Whites and hated by the Black field hands, they forge the chains and shackles and neck braces used on the slaves. These dreams make a bridge between the violence done to Black bodies in the slave era, and the violence – and acceptance of violence – that bubbles beneath the surface and occasionally erupts into the present day narrative. When Beverley records an episode of animal cruelty, Newland seems to dare us to be more shocked by that than what was done to human beings.
Newland's recurring image of a spider (including in one dream sequence probably best avoided by arachnophobes) evokes both the West African and Caribbean figure of Anansi – and the arachnoid mater (literarily ‘spider mother’) which, as Beverley’s journal entries tell us, is one of the three layers of meninges that protect brain and spinal chord and play a role in our perception of pain.
The question of whether the young man, now known as Wills, really is Beverley’s son Malakay is never fully answered. It is left to the reader to decide what the truth is, and whether it matters.
The Gospel According to Cane takes a simple narrative of maternal loss and psychological trauma, and gives it a far wider depth and resonance. Reading this, one cannot forget, either that countless babies were stolen from enslaved mothers, or that the damage done by the slave era still echo down through the generations today.
A Note on the Cover: The edition I read was the 2013 UK paperback, and the cover bothered me a lot, to the point where I have used what seemed to me the far more fitting American paperback at the head of this review. From the opening pages, it is clear that the narrator is a light-skinned Black woman of Caribbean heritage. And yet the woman on the UK cover seems to me to be generically Caucasian. Is this my distorted perception, or is it the publishing house ‘whitewashing’ the cover to make it more appealing to White readers - Something I would have hoped would not happen to an established Black author like Courttia Newland?
It is twenty years since Beverley Cottrell’s son, Malakay, was snatched, and although she has lost home, husband, job – she has managed to make a kind of life for herself, teaching creative writing to disadvantaged kids at a youth centre. But her frail balance is disturbed when she spots a young man in the street, staring at her, following her. Against the opposition of everyone around her, she becomes convinced that this is her son, returned to her.
The book is written as a series of almost haphazard journal entries by Beverley. In amongst the present day narrative are memories of her childhood, memories of her marriage and the loss of Malakay, dream sequences that take her back to the slavery era in the Caribbean, scientific analyses of pain perception – and a scattering of passages that only make sense when the book reaches its shocking climax.
The title appears to be a play on words. The Gospel According to Cane suggests both Cain, the brother of Abel, and the sugar cane harvested by the Caribbean slaves. Newland would thus seem to confront, head-on, the teaching of some white supremacist churches that the Mark of Cain, placed on him by God for the murder of his brother, was Black skin.
In Beverley’s dreams, she belongs to a family complicit in the slave trade. Despised by the Whites and hated by the Black field hands, they forge the chains and shackles and neck braces used on the slaves. These dreams make a bridge between the violence done to Black bodies in the slave era, and the violence – and acceptance of violence – that bubbles beneath the surface and occasionally erupts into the present day narrative. When Beverley records an episode of animal cruelty, Newland seems to dare us to be more shocked by that than what was done to human beings.
Newland's recurring image of a spider (including in one dream sequence probably best avoided by arachnophobes) evokes both the West African and Caribbean figure of Anansi – and the arachnoid mater (literarily ‘spider mother’) which, as Beverley’s journal entries tell us, is one of the three layers of meninges that protect brain and spinal chord and play a role in our perception of pain.
The question of whether the young man, now known as Wills, really is Beverley’s son Malakay is never fully answered. It is left to the reader to decide what the truth is, and whether it matters.
The Gospel According to Cane takes a simple narrative of maternal loss and psychological trauma, and gives it a far wider depth and resonance. Reading this, one cannot forget, either that countless babies were stolen from enslaved mothers, or that the damage done by the slave era still echo down through the generations today.
A Note on the Cover: The edition I read was the 2013 UK paperback, and the cover bothered me a lot, to the point where I have used what seemed to me the far more fitting American paperback at the head of this review. From the opening pages, it is clear that the narrator is a light-skinned Black woman of Caribbean heritage. And yet the woman on the UK cover seems to me to be generically Caucasian. Is this my distorted perception, or is it the publishing house ‘whitewashing’ the cover to make it more appealing to White readers - Something I would have hoped would not happen to an established Black author like Courttia Newland?
April 4, 2013
The Gospel According to Cane is a novel about Beverly, a woman whose baby is abducted from the backseat of her husband's car. The story happens both in the past and present weaving together the events after the child's abduction, how Beverly learned to cope with the loss, and the unraveling of her life when a boy claiming to be her son begins to follow her.
While the prose is solid, though at times maddening, the story is excellent. Courttia Newland has mastered the art of storytelling. His knack for building characters combined with well-executed dialogue allows the reader to let go and just enjoy the story.
A favorite passage is the dream sequence in which Beverly envisions herself a former slave girl, running the cane fields, trying to escape the lynching of her entire family. These near-lyrical passages offset the cold flats of the ghetto in which Beverly lives.
I'm a sucker for a book that tells a good joke and this book has plenty. I found myself laughing out loud a few times, which is surprising considering the subject. But there's a levity to Newland's prose and the structure of the story that makes it work.
While the prose is solid, though at times maddening, the story is excellent. Courttia Newland has mastered the art of storytelling. His knack for building characters combined with well-executed dialogue allows the reader to let go and just enjoy the story.
A favorite passage is the dream sequence in which Beverly envisions herself a former slave girl, running the cane fields, trying to escape the lynching of her entire family. These near-lyrical passages offset the cold flats of the ghetto in which Beverly lives.
I'm a sucker for a book that tells a good joke and this book has plenty. I found myself laughing out loud a few times, which is surprising considering the subject. But there's a levity to Newland's prose and the structure of the story that makes it work.
April 14, 2013
When More Is Less
Beverley Cottrell’s son, Malakay, was kidnapped. Any parent’s worst nightmare. The stress and strain resulted in the dissolution of her marriage. Some twenty years later she meets a young man claiming to be her long lost son.
Courttia Newland’s “The Gospel According to Cane” is a fascinating read. The plot development and writing are strong. The journey into despair wreaks havoc upon lives without anticipated consequences and thus remains within the realm of possibility. I only have two complaints. I felt the actions of the main character were, at times, unbelievable in the face of trading one’s safety to find a loss. I also felt the ending was weak with an unrealistic ending.
That said, “The Gospel According to Cane” is a worthy read and one I’d easily recommend.
Reviewed by: Gail
Beverley Cottrell’s son, Malakay, was kidnapped. Any parent’s worst nightmare. The stress and strain resulted in the dissolution of her marriage. Some twenty years later she meets a young man claiming to be her long lost son.
Courttia Newland’s “The Gospel According to Cane” is a fascinating read. The plot development and writing are strong. The journey into despair wreaks havoc upon lives without anticipated consequences and thus remains within the realm of possibility. I only have two complaints. I felt the actions of the main character were, at times, unbelievable in the face of trading one’s safety to find a loss. I also felt the ending was weak with an unrealistic ending.
That said, “The Gospel According to Cane” is a worthy read and one I’d easily recommend.
Reviewed by: Gail
April 9, 2013
Imagine that your baby is kidnapped and twenty years later a young man shows up and claims to be that child. Imagine also that you are a teacher of disadvantaged youth and this young man is representative of what you are trying to save your students from. This book works on this premise. However, there are disjointed dreams (an attempt to relate to ancestors?) and what appears to be violent confrontations, the last of which which is followed by a chapter that makes little sense and provides no explanation for what was described in the previous chapter, leaving the reader with many unanswered questions. I received this book as an Early Reviewer. I have not been compensated in any way (other than being given a copy of this book) and my opinion on the book is entirely my own.
May 6, 2013
I like Courttia's books. I trust that he can correctly document the experiences of the Black Brit and he definitely does so in The Gospel according to Cane. The story, a black woman who's son is taken from her twenty years ago, is about doubt and ambiguity, and how one copes or perhaps learns to live with never ending pain. Newland has the facility to capture the street slang, to convincingly depict a woman (I had to keep reminding myself the author is male) and create interesting secondary characters (like Ida) but from this book, Courttia is moving from strength to strength with his writing. I look forward to always reading his books.
December 25, 2014
Black British author Courttia Newland brings a gripping story of an abducted child who returns home as a young adult full of anger, grief, and love. Set in contemporary London, the novel tells the desperate story of Beverley whose son was kidnapped from a locked, parked car while dad bought dinner. After 20 years of trying to piece her life back together, her son, Malakay, reappears as a temporary stalker opening the mail slot of her front door at night and calling her name. Fascinating story of redemption. BuytheBook.
July 14, 2013
Courttia Newland is another of my favourite authors. It feels really out of order to say I didn't enjoy this. I had high hopes, but this just isn't my favourite of his books. I felt the pace wasn't right, the prose seemed a little disorganised and I didn't care about any of the characters. I'm still excited for his next book though.
June 19, 2014
I really wanted to like this book. I enjoyed the writing, but the story never really came together for me. I understand that people handle stress differently, but the the main character Beverly, seem to never be able to function. She always seem to be just going through the motions. I could never get a connection to any of the character in this book.
April 15, 2013
At first glance this sounds like a mainstream thriller but it's not really about what you think it's about. Scratch the surface and you'll find a powerful allegorical story about a woman overcoming a painful past. I recommend you read it twice to fully appreciate it's many layers.
May 14, 2013
I won this book through Library Thing. While I found this book a quick read and it kept my attention, I ultimately found it unsatisfying. Too many loose ends and jangled thoughts for me. Not terrible but definitely not great.
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August 22, 2013I loved this book until I got to the conclusion, which felt rushed and all too pat. I look forward to seeing other books by this talented writer.
February 3, 2016
Never did quite understand this one
November 6, 2016
Good read
Enjoyed. Good read, kept you guessing & good pacing. Would recommend to all who want a pacey family novel. Good.
Enjoyed. Good read, kept you guessing & good pacing. Would recommend to all who want a pacey family novel. Good.
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