Black Marina

by Emma Tennant

Black Marina, set on an 'island paradise' in the Caribbean, tells a story of great force and poignancy partly inspired by the events surrounding the invasion of Grenada in 1983. Holly Baker, an English woman, came to St James during her carefree days of bar-hopping in the 1960s. Somehow she never managed to get away. Now, her loyalties fluctuating, she is caught up in the advanced stages of a drama both personal and political - and which embodies the conflicts inherent in this small, dangerously placed society. As the island and its visitors prepare for Christmas, events that were seeded at the time of Holly's arrival on St James finally blow up into a violent and chilling debacle. 'A gentle and poetic style contains a hot, explosive story.' Vogue 'Witty and tragic.' Listener Faber Finds is devoted to restoring to readers a wealth of lost or neglected classics and authors of distinction. The range embraces fiction, non-fiction, the arts and children's books. For a full list of available titles visit www.faberfinds.co.uk. To join the dialogue with fellow book-lovers please see our blog, www.faberfindsblog.co.uk.

Genres: Adult Fiction

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Since the early 1970s, when she was in her mid-thirties, Emma Tennant has been a prolific novelist and has established herself as one of the leading British exponents of "new fiction." This does not mean that she is an imitator of either the French nouveaux romanciers or the American post-modernists, although her work reveals an indebtedness to the methods and preoccupations of some of the latter. Like them, she employs parody and rewriting, is interested in the fictiveness of fiction, appropriates some science-fiction conventions, and exploits the possibilities of generic dislocation and mutation, especially the blending of realism and fantasy. Yet, although parallels can be cited and influences suggested, her work is strongly individual, the product of an intensely personal, even idiosyncratic, attempt to create an original type of highly imaginative fiction.

Reviews

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Black Marina is a person, born out of wedlock to a young English woman and an Islander. Her story is told to the background of social upheaval and rebellion in the Caribbean. When she leaves England to find her father, she discovers turmoil instead.

[Ann Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the sort of book you need to read more than once to get anything out of. The language is rich and poetic but the time-shifts and different voices are so confusing that it is difficult to know at any one point which part of the story you are involved in. The atmosphere of the Carribean is evoked well, as is the decaying post colonial society - also a bit of James Bond-style intrigue and espionage. I am sure that there are a lot of hidden messages in this book, messages about feminism, colonialism, injustice and power, but I'm afraid I found it so confusing to read that these messages did not get through to me. And the ending?? Was it that Marina was in fact Sanjay's daughter, that he ended up raping her at the end, and that her search for her absent father, the post-colonial black poet Ford, darling of the London litterati was completely misplaced? Sorry, but I was left mystified.