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Independence
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Independence is the deeply moving story of the coming of age of a country and a boy, at the time of Barbados’ independence from Britain in 1966. Fourteen-year-old Christopher Lucas and Stephanie King have been neighbours and best friends since they were born a few months apart. They have been raised by their impoverished grandmothers after their mothers went “over ’n’ away
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ebook, 336 pages
Published
January 28th 2014
by Harper Perennial
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The short answer is no. I'm not a big fan of this book. I feel it's poorly characterized and poorly written.
Independence is a story about Christopher a young man from Barbados a newly independent nation. His mother and the mother of his best friend Stephanie are both "over and away" in Canada working. Their big dreams as the book opens is that one day their mothers will send for them.
I'm not familiar with Cecil Foster's previous work fiction or non, and yet this book shares many characteristics ...more
Independence is a story about Christopher a young man from Barbados a newly independent nation. His mother and the mother of his best friend Stephanie are both "over and away" in Canada working. Their big dreams as the book opens is that one day their mothers will send for them.
I'm not familiar with Cecil Foster's previous work fiction or non, and yet this book shares many characteristics ...more

1967/68: Barbados is an independent country, and two adolescents (13 and 14 years old), left by their mothers with their grandmothers, are also coming of age.
This is well-written, and an obvious metaphor for the country - which takes nothing away from the book. People take advantage of the young people, everyone trying to survive in a changing world, trying to figure out what "independence" means. Good job Cecil Foster.
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This is well-written, and an obvious metaphor for the country - which takes nothing away from the book. People take advantage of the young people, everyone trying to survive in a changing world, trying to figure out what "independence" means. Good job Cecil Foster.
...more

Christopher, the novel's protagonist, and Stephanie are God siblings, neighbours, and best friends. They are also coming of age in the time of Barbados' independence from England (1966) while their single mothers have gone "over n' away" to North America for work. While Stephanie has already slipped into the assumption that she is more mature than she actually is, Christopher is focused on getting back in contact with his mother. During post-independence Barbados, many of the island's young adul
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This one's more like a 2.5 for me. I LOVE "post-colonial" Caribbean literature, so I was excited to read this novel about a nation on either edge of national "independence". Instead, I found Independence pretty boring, flat, and predictable, with both main characters I mostly couldn't get invested in (perhaps because of the very choppy, large unimpassioned writing (which I found really ironic because "independence" writ large seems like something that is/should be close to the essence of "impass
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Stephanie and Christopher, both 14 year olds, live next door to each other. They have been friends all their lives. Their parents moved overseas for work since they were quite young. Stephanie and Christopher's grandparents raised them with no financial assistance from the parents even though the grandparents were quite poor. A man from the community, who had returned from Canada, began lavishing Stephanie with gifts. This caused friction between the grandmothers, and Stephanie's aunt. Christoph
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