The Mermaid of Black Conch

by Monique Roffey

In 1976, David is fishing off the island of Black Conch when he comes upon a creature he doesn't expect: a mermaid by the name of Aycayia. Once a beautiful young woman, she was cursed by jealous wives to live in this form for the rest of her days. But after the mermaid is caught by American tourists, David rescues and hides her away in his home, finding that, once out of the water, she begins to transform back into a woman.

Now David must work to win Aycayia's trust while she relearns what it is to be human, navigating not only her new body but also her relationship with others on the island--a difficult task after centuries of loneliness. As David and Aycayia grow to love each other, they juggle both the joys and the dangers of life on shore. But a lingering question remains: Will the former mermaid be able to escape her curse? Taking on many points of view, this mythical adventure tells the story of one woman's return to land, her healing, and her survival.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Magical Realism, Historical Fiction, Romance, Book Club, Audiobook

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2020

About the author

Monique Roffey, FRSL, is an award winning British-Trinidadian writer. Her most recent novel, Passiontide, (Harvill, 2024), a crime thriller and protest novel, was a finalist for the prestigious US Caricon Award.

The Mermaid of Black Conch (Peepal Tree Press/Vintage) won the Costa Book of the Year Award, 2020 and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, 2020, the Rathbones/Folio Award 2021, and the Republic of Consciousness Award. Her other novels have been shortlisted for The Orange Prize, Costa Novel Award, Encore and Orion Awards. In 2013, Archipelago won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize

Winner of the Costa Prize for Best Novel, Shortlisted for Goldsmiths and Rathbones Folio Prize.

Book 3/10

As you can see above, this novel does not need my endorsement but I am going to give it anyway. I listened to the audiobook which worked very well with the structure of this book. A part of it is written as a journal of David Baptiste, a part is narrated in 3rd person and one smaller part, written in free verse, represents the direct thoughts of the mermaid

The novel is based on Taino Legends and it tells the story of Aycayia, a woman from an ancient time who has been cursed by jealous women and forced to live as a mermaid for hundreds of years. The novel is set in 1976 when the mermaid discovers David, a young fisherman and is enticed by his songs. During a fishing competition, the mermaid is caught by two Americans who want to take her back home for money. David rescues the half fish, half woman and hides her in his house where she almost transforms back to human. David is helped by Miss Rain, a white woman, whose ancestors settled on the island. She still owns most of it and has a child with a black man who left them to live in another town.

The author uses the story of the mermaid and of the locals of Black Conch to discuss colonialism and it repercussions, the condition of women in the past and present, greed, humanity and most important, love .

The structure of the novel was original and really worked for me. The two narrators did a wonderful job to bring the story and the people to life. I am looking forward to reading more of Monique Roffey, a talented writer from Trinidad and Tobago.

About Peepal Tree Press (from their website): Peepal Tree is a wholly independent company, founded in 1985, and now publishing around 20 books a year. We have published over 300 titles, and are committed to keeping most of them in print. The list features new writers and established voices. In 2009 we launched the Caribbean Modern Classics Series, which restores to print essential books from the past with new introductions.

[Ellie Spencer (catching up from hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounded down from roughly 4.5 stars ⭐️ Going into this book I never expected I would love it as much as I did.

The Mermaid of Black Conch tells the story of Aycayia, a young woman who was cursed to be a mermaid because of her beauty. She is captured by American tourists one day, looking to make money from their find. David, a local sailor, finds her and rescues her. But none of them could have guessed what would happen next.

It took me a little while to get used to the style of this book. Some parts are poems and much of it is written in dialect which always takes me a while to get used to. However, once I’d got the hang of it I fell completely in love. I honestly did not want to put this book down and found myself staying up late to read it. The chapters are longer than I usually like, although they were broken into sections which helped. The sections jump between different points of view which helped to tell the tale from different perspectives.

I truly did not feel like I was reading fiction, it was written in a way that made it all feel completely real. My heart ached when I came to the last few pages, I just did not want it to end. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the characters or the small island. There are some inconsistencies within the book, but I didn’t mind them. I just found myself completely lost within the pages. This is a true gem of a book and is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. The kindness shown by the characters for the mermaid, someone very different from themselves, has wormed its way into my soul. Kindness is so important.

I recommend this to anyone who fancies trying a fairytale/mythological tale with a focus on the present day.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were many things I was primed to discuss in my review of Monique Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch, none of it very favorable. Then I read the About The Author section, which states that "Her memoir, With the Kisses of His Mouth traces a personal journey of mid-life sexual self-discovery." Given that, it seems probable that much of what I found to be tawdry, cringeworthy, embarrassingly adolescent, hypersexual, and gynocentric is not fictional and so is best not addressed at all in this forum. But that's okay because there's still lots to report.

On the plus side, this island-based romantic tragedy is vaguely reminiscent of the work of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou with their themes of burgeoning womanhood, female sexuality, race, class, oppression, injustice, and self-sufficiency. Sadly, though, Roffey is without their talent for elevating such subject matter. In fact she seems very comfortable throwing whatever she wants onto the page and expecting her readers to unthinkingly soak it up. This is a work that is meant to be deep but more often delivers moments that are trite and unpersuasive. Despite these reservations - or specifically because of them - it may be Netflix-bound. It definitely has a cinematic feel, with vivid imagery, stilted dialogue, close-ups of anguished or transfigured faces, mustache-twirling bad guys (and gals), and a Reggae soundtrack.

The inconsistencies and absurdities are too numerous to fully address. They include:

The eponymous mermaid who "must weigh 600 pounds" and is "seemingly almost the length of Dauntless" (a Boston whaler), but which the young man, David, can wrangle into a wheelbarrow, truck bed, and then bath tub without assistance.

A deaf boy named Reggie who likes to feel the bass vibrations of loud Reggae course through his body yet is oddly satisfied when using 1976-era headphones to accomplish that.

This same boy communicating through American Sign Language, which the mermaid understands immediately and describes as "language of the time before time".

A white woman who "only speaks Black Conch English" and yet went to convent school on Barbados.

But no two readers are alike and perhaps you will enjoy this book more than I did. Here are some direct quotes to help you decide:

In the dead of night, under a full and waxing moon... Oh, goody: it's already full but about to get even bigger.

The pores on Miss Rain's arms rose up. Man, them's some tricky pores!

Priscilla sat in his office chair, one leg up on his desk. One hand rested on her pussy. Teacher's Pet, I wanna be Teacher's Pet...

Deep down, in his balls, he knew he'd done something unjust. I personally don't think of this region as the seat of justice, despite the origins of the word "testify".

"Hands in the air," Life shouted, aiming his gun at the balls of the police officer... "Up," he said. "Don't move a muscle." Well, which is it? Should he move or stay perfectly still, because I'm willing to bet he wants to keep his barometers of justice.

The old Yankee man stood and shouted, "For Christ sake, can someone arrest this man, Life, or whatever his goddamn name is. You people and your goddamn stupid names." Keep in mind that these two men have never met before and that Life is not introduced or referred to by name in this scene.

This was what they remembered, one big mudderass mermaid: long tail, silver-black and patterned like a barracuda or a shark, skin glittering, hands back to fins. Then, in the very next paragraph and again on the following page: She was making hand signals to Reggie. Apparently ASL isn't just the language before time, it's the language before consistency.

This novel is often insultingly bad. I wanted to believe that it couldn't possibly have gone through any editing, but the Afterword clearly singles out Jeremy Poynting, Managing Editor of Peepal Tree Press, "for making this a better book". While it is conceivable Mr. Poynting helped to bring about some improvements, that doesn't mean this was ready for publication.

Initially this had a 3.5 star feel but that wasn't sustainable. I'm giving it 1.5 stars, rounded up for its incorporation of Caribbean folklore, culture, and language.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deservedly 2020's most heralded novel - Winner of the Costa Prize for Best Book and for Best Novel, Goldsmiths Prize shortlisted, shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, shortlisted for the Novel section of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction

And inexplicably overlooked for the Booker Prize and Women's Prize, which says rather more about those prizes than the book.

I want to stay my woman self
even here when my people long dead
I want to be here on land again
but deep inside I know there is still some mix up
I am still half and half
half woman and half cursed woman
cursed still in this new place
The sea is a strong pull

The Mermaid of the Black Conch comes from the Costa and Women’s Prize shortlisted Monique Roffey and the wonderful small independent publisher Peepal Tree Press which “aims to bring you the very best of international writing from the Caribbean, its diasporas and the UK”.

The magic-realist novel is centered around a mythical figure, a mermaid, from Taino legends, cursed thousands of years ago to live in the sea, as the author explained when she was crowdfunding the novel:

My mermaid is called Aycayia, or 'Sweet Voice', and she comes from the north Western part of the Caribbean. She is a woman cursed, for her beauty and her song. A Taino legend tells us she was banished, one night, when the Goddess Jagua sent a huracan to sweep her out to sea along with an old crone, Guanayoa who became an old leatherback turtle. This is just one of the many tales of mermaids in the Caribbean.

The novel is based on the island of Black Conch, fictional but based on northern Tobago, and set in 1976. 1976 was the year Trinidad and Tobago became a republic, although not mentioned in the text, and Roffey has set about the time it is set:

I didn’t want my mermaid to be captured on FB, Twitter and Insta, for example. I wanted there to be some doubt as to whether she had been caught at all, (everyone goes to the bar and gets drunk after she is caught, for example) and for the news story of her capture not to go viral within minutes….which it would if a mermaid was actually caught today and strung up on a jetty. Also, the Seventies was a time of uprising and revolution, especially in the Caribbean: Bob Marley, Black Power uprisings and of course feminism. Reggie, Miss Rain’s deaf poet son, has learned about deaf poems and has been given ideas about pride and community by a hippie leftie American teacher. I wanted the dawn of a Western and Caribbean social revolution to be part of the book’s backdrop. The Seventies in the Caribbean was a time of radical change in society, political thinking and across the arts. Cuba was communist and the Anglophone islands were no longer ruled by the British; there was self rule, black leaders, and a new era of nation building. And there were still big marlin in the sea to catch, too.

David, in his mid 20s, is a fisherman, who plays his guitar while he waits in the sea for a bite, and finds he has attracted the attention of a mermaid, who swims near to his boat, although the two don’t directly interact.

But when the annual fishing competition takes place on the island, attracting entrants from all over the Caribbean and further afield, including a father and son from Florida, David accidentally leads them in her direction, and they capture Aycayia, after an epic (and wonderfully portrayed) struggle. As they celebrate in the local rum shop, David finds Aycayia hanging from a fish hook, cuts her down and takes her to his house.

The scene of the drunken men is inspired by Neruda's poem:

All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death

And the mermaid hanging from the fishhook by this picture of Ernest Hemingway. (Roffey in an interview "I did see a photo of Hemingway standing next to three or four huge marlin in the Bahamas, and he stood proud. It’s a terrible picture. How dated it is now. They looked like racks of beef, or like human bodies strung up. I had that photo pinned to the wall while writing this book")



This is David's first person account from his journal written 40 years later in the local creole, entries from which are interspersed with the third-person narration (mostly in more standard English) and Aycayia’s own thoughts, which are set down, in free verse:

Well, when I saw her hanging upside down, like reverse crucified, my heart stop and my blood run cold cold cold. So, they ketch her. My worse fear. I kept up with their boat for an hour or so, but left before they hook her good. They were heading far out. I turn back; I already had a bad feeling in my gut that my boat engine might lure her to them. So I turn back, but too late. My damn fault they pull her out of the sea, bring she back half-dead. I figure she was dead when I saw her hanging so, upside down, mouth and hands tie up, just like a crab ready for the market. I feel shame, man, to see her like that, and I figured quick quick how to cut her down. I was fraid something bad go happen otherwise. Men could get on bad in these parts with too much alcohol, with a thing like this. Miss Rain wouldn’t like it at all. I knew that. She was very particular about women and how they get treated.

Miss Rain is another key character, a white woman, ancestors of settlers and still owner of much of the local land, although she has given away many plots to local smallholders. Her deaf son, Reggie, is the first to communicate with Aycayia, teaching her sign language. Meanwhile Aycayia starts to transform from a mermaid back into a woman and to fall in love with David:

Part of me still alone
I am back on land and yet a stranger to this island
I cannot use language
Boy teach me his language first
and I learn quick quick to use my hands to talk
Boy is my first friend in Black Conch
David is a man
Different set of situations

I figure Guanayoa still in the ocean waiting
I lived with her too before huracan came
and the waves took us out to sea
What if a next huracan come?
I take the big shell from David's porch
to call to her one night
let her know I'm alive.
Nobody but her know who I am
I was human again, trying to learn quick
I was not sure if this was my dreams come true
I was lonely I missed the sea
I missed my loneliness
I was trying to understand everything
Heart mixed up
The man David make me feel mixed up

At its mid-point, as even Reggie’s father, Miss Rain’s love since childhood, comes back on the scene, the novel seems almost idyllic. But the situation can’t hold. Some of the locals can’t accept Aycayia’s presence or history, both jealous of David's attraction to her and hostile to her otherness, and the mythical curse itself hasn’t gone away.

The climax comes when a category 5 hurricane, the fictitious Rosamund, big sister of the real-life Hurricane Flora that devastated Tobago in 1961 (although relocated to 1961 in the novel’s Black Conch), strikes.

Roffey’s perspective is feminist, and one can read into the novel messages of colonialism (both historic - Aycacia’s own people, the Taino, were wiped out by Spanish settlers and smallpox, and the author has acknowledged the influence of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies – and more recent, particularly in the troubled relationship of the benign Miss Rain with even her own, black, lover), about ecological damage and of otherness. But this is handled deftly and left to the reader’s interpretation, as the author’s primary focus is on telling a great story

Recommended – and a novel which I think has a strong chance of prize recognition – Booker or Women’s Prize if the entry barriers for small presses don’t prevent it, as well as the Republic of Consciousness Prize.

[Postscript - well I was right to predict prize success but picked, with the exception of the RoC, all the wrong prizes!]

Some interviews:

https://advantagesofage.com/exclusive...

https://minorliteratures.com/2020/03/...

https://www.cunning-folk.com/conversa...

A longer extract:

http://bookanista.com/back-on-land/

[BookOfCinz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Updated February 23, 2021
I re-read this for Book Club and I enjoy it so much. How did I forget about raining fish?!
Either, way... this is a book club pick and one of my favorite books for 2020.


“Me, a fisherman and she my lady friend; the sea was our matchmaker…”
A Love story like no other…

This is not your typical mermaid or love story and that is what made The Mermaid of Black Conch utterly unique. Set in 1976 we are introduced to a fictional Caribbean Island called Black Conch that is reminiscence of an island in the Lesser Antilles. The book opens with David Baptiste who is a fisherman from the small village of St. Constance, he takes his pirogue, which was the only value thing his father left when he went to the bigger island to seek a better life. David takes his pirogue out to Murder Bay daily to fish, and spend some alone time singing and playing his guitar.

One day while David is singing, he attracts the attention of “sea-dweller” he thought only existed in fairy tales and island “ole talk”. David sees the Mermaid, goes through a range of emotions one being curiosity. Daily he revisits the spot where he first sights the Mermaid, she begins showing up to hear him sing and play the guitar. They form a sort of bond that continues for weeks until the Mermaid begins listening for the hum of David’s boat.

Fast forward to the biggest that happens on Black Conch, the yearly Marlin Competition. This sees competitors from all over the Caribbean and as for as Miami coming to Black Conch coming to seek top prize. During the competition instead of catching a Marlin they instead catch the Mermaid. The Captain starts seeing dollar signs and all the different ways he can make use of the Mermaid for his benefit. The Captain hangs his prize on the jetty sandwiched between two marlins while he goes off to celebrate his fortune.

David upon hearing about the capture of the Mermaid heads to the jetty, cuts her down and takes her home. He doesn’t have a plan, but he knows he cannot let the Mermaid come to ruin, he also knows doing this may lead to his ruin, but he takes the chance.

Aycayia was a beautiful woman who loved dancing, years ago she was cursed by jealous wives who sealed her off and threw her in the sea away from their men. Aycayia have been roaming the Caribbean Sea along with turtle who was once an old woman who also got cursed. For years Aycayia made friends with sea creatures and kept to herself, that is until she heard the strumming of David’s guitar and his singing. One could prepare her for life on Black Conch after years of living underwater, one prepared her for what falling in love with a man would mean for her.

What an epic well thought out love story with a realistic Caribbean twist. A Mermaid caught off the coast of a Caribbean island and she ends up falling in love with a lowly fisherman… I WANT MORE! I read this story in one day because it just had to know what became of these lovers. The writing was well executed, and the pacing perfect for the kind of story that was being told. We had history, folklore, power dynamics, and such tender moments all interspersed throughout the novel.

For the theme of love, I enjoyed the story of David and Aycayia, it is not every day you read of a Caribbean man falling in love with a Mermaid and being utterly tender with the process of waiting for him to fall in love with her. I was so taken by how Roffey showcased a Caribbean man being hopelessly in love with woman and willing to do anything for her including turning his back on his village. I find we don’t the positive aspects of love being explored in this way, even if it is between a Mermaid and a Man.

The theme of love continued and was explored in a somewhat nuanced way between Ms. Rain and Life. Ms. Rain’s ancestors were slave owners on Black Conch, they own almost all property and land on the island that was passed down to Ms. Rain and her siblings. Ms. Rain grew up among the children on the island and from a young age latched on to Life after one day in class he cut one of her ponytail. Ms. Rain and Life explored their love for each other which ended up in Ms. Rain getting pregnant, upon hearing of the pregnancy, Life ran away. In this love story Roffey sought to explore how history impedes love and how a man must make his own way and not take from the hands that enslaved his ancestors. I liked that Roffey did not shy from this topic of colonialism and it’s effect in today’s society.

There is the exploration of greed and what people will do get their hands on money. Throughout the book there is the ever presence of women and what happens when they own their sexuality. So much to talk about with this book, but overall a must read.

This was such a well written, enchanting read that I hope everyone takes the time to read.

Thanks Peepal Tree Press for sending me a copy of this book.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now shortlisted (the fabulous) 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize as well as winner of the (rather better known) 2020 Costa Book of The Year prize and previously shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith Prize and 2021 Folio Prize.

“Every afternoon, around three o’clock, David dropped Aycayia to Miss Rain’s for lessons. There at the table in the grand room with wooden floors, sat an indigenous woman of the Caribbean; cursed to be a mermaid by her own sisterhood, whose people had all but died out, slaughtered by the Castiilian Admiral and his kind; a woman who, as a mermaid, was pulled out of the sea by Yankee men who wanted to auction her off and if not that, stuff her and keep her as a trophy; a woman who was rescued by a Black Conch fisherman [David]; a mermaid who had come back to live as a woman of the Caribbean again. She sat quietly as she learnt language again, from another woman she wasn’t sure she could trust. This woman was white, dappled with freckles, and no matter what she wasn’t, she was of the type who had wiped her people out. Arcadia [Rain] was self conscious, because she only spoke Black Conch English, a mixture of words from the oppressor and the oppressed.

A fascinating exploration of a mermaid myth – this one from the Neo-Taino people (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigen... for some details), and which places its subject into mid 1970s Black Conch (a fictionalised version of Tobago) at a time of change and convulsion in that nation.

The story (which is summarised in the opening quote) is told in three interleaved sections: a conventional third party omniscient narrator telling the story of 1976; a journal written by David Baptiste (the local fisherman who first finds, then rescues Aycayia – and then falls in love with her) some 30 years later as he reflects on his feelings, actions and mistakes; and free form verse from Aycayia mingling her life in the sea, her time on Black Conch and her burgeoning memories of the time centuries earlier before her banishment, told in a mixture of the native tongue she is remembering and the Black Conch English she is learning (together – just like Arcadia’s deaf son David - with America sign language and book English).

At one stage Aycayia reflects on her time as a mermaid – “The sea was deeper than she knew or could swim … Her time had been spent mostly in the upper sea”: and I found that a good metaphor for the reading experience in this book

It is possible to stay closer to the surface and enjoy this book (in line with its subtitle) as an enjoyable if unique love story.

But it is also possible to go deeper and to see it as something which explores many of the themes and ideas that inform both Roffey’s other writing (female sexuality, pre-Christian legends – particularly foundational myths about womanhood, Caribbean history on a multi-century scale, colonialism, creolisation, fatherhood, outsiders) and her wider activism (particularly her XR involvement).

Perhaps for me, the most striking and topical passage of the book is when a vexatious local woman and her occasional lover (a corrupt policeman) confront Arcadia with how, for her all her insistence that they are in the wrong, her very life is built on white privilege and that she is literally living in and on the proceeds of slavery (but all against a background of a state founded on the prior eradication of the native peoples).

A different and worthwhile read.

[Trudie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great first few chapters, excellent in fact but then we have this stuff -

Sweet sexing in the blue hours of the night. Sexing had been his true calling in life. Not being a fisherman.

The sea-rose, in-out, like sexing. Up-down, push-pull ( Yep, I think we get the analogy here )

Sexing had made her old self speak her first language; she could get back there, in the magic bed. Sexing had blown away the aeons of time that had killed off her memory.

Priscilla give a big sexual smile and stare me down. It made my blood freeze. "Why you so vexed with me, chunkaloonks ?

I know I was pretty vexed by a promising start that devolved to absolute gubbins ....

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I said to my book group, anytime a character encounters a fearsome, mythic sea creature and their first thought is basically, "I'd like to get with that," the entire novel should then be devoted to what exactly is going on with that character. Loneliness? Hedonism? Need to please? Need to conquer everything one sees? It's not a setup for the love story of the century, is what I'm saying.

Still, I was willing to overlook it in The Mermaid of Black Conch because I liked so much else about the book: the characters were great, the setting was vivid, and the plot even built to some suspense at the end. I thought the author did a good job of making David sympathetic, and the mermaid herself was really interesting, nothing typical about her portrayal. I also thought this fit right into the tradition of Caribbean-set literature, from Zora Neale Hurston to Jean Rhys to newer books like An Untamed State, so I appreciated the writing on that level as well. 3.5 stars, but I'm rounding up because it's been a couple months since I read it and my fondness seems to have grown in that time.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5****

Old woman, pretty woman, both rejects. Womanhood was a dangerous business if you didn’t get it right.

This book was so bittersweet and beautiful, the ending pages almost left me crying.

This is not your standard mermaid story but so much more profound and unique. It’s setting is 1970’s Black Conch island in a small Caribbean village. David, a lonely fisherman, attracts a sea creature that he didn’t expect. Aycayia, an ancient mermaid, cursed for her beauty to venture the sea and lead a life of loneliness and exile. She has been cursed for many many centuries and comes from ancient times, but David intrigues her with his song.

As a relationship of fascination develops between David and Aycayia, it becomes Aycyia’s undoing and she is caught and at the mercy of sinister men. When the men are distracted, David saves Aycayia and hides her.
A relationship of trust and intrigue slowly develops- as well of one of romance.
However, this new life will take a while to adjust and cannot last forever, not when you’ve been cursed by a goddess.

This book was unique, intriguing and beautiful. But it was also very melancholic, and there was much sorrow and sad moments.
This story especially focuses on how Aycayia touches upon and changes the life of a particular group of people, including David, the fisherman who falls in love with her.

The romance in this was sweet and gradual but it was not the main focus in this book. There was also the vicious jealousies of women and their malicious actions against other women; it included racism and its history; sexuality; and, misogynistic views in this culture on Black Conch.

I especially loved working out the Caribbean language and bringing these characters to life. This book was so immersive and I loved its focus on myths and transformation.

One of the characters I couldn’t help but adore, called Reggie, is so open and curious about the world. He is the one to fall into such an easy and close friendship with Aycayia, with such an open-mindedness that I loved their bond together.

I will definitely be reading more from this author!!

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be a novel about a mermaid but it's definitely not a Disney tale. At the centre of this story is the destructive effects of female jealousy, the dizzying impact of heartfelt passion and the deleterious legacy of colonialism on a fictional Caribbean island. Monique Roffey is a writer whose work I enthusiastically follow because her books are so varied and creative. The three I've read previously “The White Woman on the Green Bicycle”, “House of Ashes” and “The Tryst” each use inventive stories to approach different social, political and emotional subject matter. I was also inspired to read this new novel since I've joined in #Caribathon, an online readathon of Caribbean literature.

“The Mermaid of Black Conch” is subtitled “a love story” as it chronicles three different kinds of romance in the village of St Constance. A Rasta fisherman falls in love with a cursed mermaid; after a ten year separation a white proprietress is reunited with the black man she fell in love with in her youth; and the local female gossipmonger seduces a corrupt policeman again to draw him into her troublemaking scheme. Their tales are dramatized to give a dynamic portrait of love when it's impacted by time, greed, race and the historical consequences of slavery/colonialism. But at the centre of this novel is the fantastical story of Aycayia, an indigenous woman that was cursed by the village women long ago because she was perceived to be a beautiful threat. For centuries she's lived a lonely existence in the ocean as a mermaid. When Aycayia is caught by American tourists on a fishing expedition the village is thrown into an uproar as they alternately befriend, abuse or seek to capitalize on this discovery. Meanwhile, a hurricane is brewing that threatens upturn the whole island.

Read my full review of The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey on LonesomeReader

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Pros: 1000+yo Caribbean mermaid, everlasting curse, exploration of post-colonialism issues
Cons: Born-sexy-yesterday trope (an adult who is innocent/virginal, can't act independently without a man (usually), looks young), icky comments about what makes a woman a woman, insta-love

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020
Shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021

This book is an imaginative poetic fantasy built on the mythology and history of the Caribbean, that I rather enjoyed, but it is a book that I found difficult to review.

It tells the story of Aycayia, a woman from a pre-European Caribbean culture who has been cursed and forced to live as a near-immortal mermaid. These are the fantasy trappings that underpin the story, but the rest is very much set in the real world, mostly in 1976. Aycayia develops an interest in David, a young fisherman who likes to sing on his boat, and is caught by an American-led fishing boat. David rescues her and hides her in his house, where she sheds her skin and becomes almost human again.

The story is told in three alternating voices - an unnamed omniscient third person narrator, David's journal, written as an older man in 2015, and Aycayia's own words, which are told in blank verse.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

... but there are still a few people round St Constance who remember him as a young man and his part in the events in 1976, when those white men from Florida came to fish for marlin and instead pulled a mermaid out of the sea

So much of the substance of this book is lightly summarised in this quotation: the Caribbean setting, St Constance which is invented and yet feels real, the importance of memory and the perpetual weight of history, manhood and what it might mean, 'those white men' (though they're interestingly divided as the story progresses), fishing and related ecological issues... and the mermaid who is pulled up as if she, too, were a marlin, captured for sport and a trophy of a certain type of manliness.

And there's more, too, to this book: the history of slavery is never far beneath the idyllic landscape, and is treated with subtlety in the benign inheritor, Arcadia (ha!) Rain, who, all the same, can't quite escape the extent to which her life is the culmination of white colonialist privilege. And Aycayia (does it matter that her name is so close to Arcadia?) herself, the mermaid, contains within her body and history (or is her body her history?) the passing of time as she reaches back to a pre-colonial era, as she is both victim and yet strangely powerful, as she is both human and other, woman and not-woman in so many ways.

In a stunning fusion of story and voice, this is told in a lyrical manner which uses Caribbean cadences and rhythm alongside Aycayia's free verse narrative, foregrounding language as one of the contested issues here: the 'standard' harsh American of the men from Florida contrasted with variations of accent and communications from sign language to singing. I listened to the audiobook and benefited from the authentic reading - I don't think this is a book which should be read in 'received pronunciation' English!

For all the issues, this never becomes a book which forgets its story or characters - there is a unique love story here, and one which is inflected through myth and legend - which are themselves fragments of previous cultures washing through time.

With clever intertexts from Hemingway through to Splash!, this is a wonderful weaving of cultures, histories and stories with its political points made organically and lightly. And yes, with that lovely, aching love story too, this effortlessly bridges that space between 'popular' and 'literary'.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
Set on a small island in the Caribbean this is a modern day fairy tale with inevitable magic realist elements. The timeline is split between 1976 and 2016. It revolves around a local fisherman David Baptiste. When out fishing he sometimes sees a creature in the water, which he eventually realises is a mermaid. The mermaid is caught by American tourists and put on display in the harbour. David sees her and at night cuts her down and takes her home where she gradually recovers and becomes more human again. Then things start to become difficult and complicated. This is a fairy tale, but Disney it most definitely is not. No well-groomed Ariel:
“She looking like a woman from long ago, like old-time Taino people I saw in a history book at school. She face was young and not pretty at all, and I recognise something ancient there too. I saw the face of a human woman who once lived centuries past, shining at me. I saw she breasts, under the fine scaly suit. I saw webbed fingers and how they dripped with sargassum seaweed. Her hair was full of seaweed too, black black and long and alive with stinging creatures — like she carry a crown on her head of electricity wires. […] Then there was her tail […] Yards and yards of musty silver. It gave she a look of power, like she grow out of the tail itself. I think, then, that this fish-woman must be heavy as a mule.
Sea moss trailed from her shoulders like slithers of beard. Barnacles speckled the swell of her hips. Her torso was sturdy and muscular, finely scaled over, as if she wore a tunic of sharkskin. She was crawling with sea-lice. They saw that when her diaphragm heaved, it revealed wide slits which were gills and they looked sharp enough to slice a finger off. All the men backed away. Her spine spikes were flat, like the spokes of a folded umbrella, but when they flared and spread, they revealed a mighty dorsal.”
The transformations in the novel are messy and difficult and often general mermaid lore is turned on its head. There is a curse, but it is not one that is easily broken. Instead of the necessity of keeping something belonging to the mermaid, David gives the mermaid (named Aycayia) a pair of sneakers to help her walk. She is taught language by a good friend of David (Arcadia) and befriends Arcadia’s ten year old son Reggie who uses sigh language as he is without hearing.
The catching of the mermaid is pure Hemingway with the father and son US tourists fishing for marlin and the struggle to land her is long and messy and brutal. The older man is angry when his catch disappears:
“He wanted the mermaid back. If not millions, and an auction to a museum, he wanted the bloody thing stuffed and mounted on his wall. He had caught her fair and square. He had papers, a licence to keep what he’d caught.”
She is seen as property not as a person. Aycayia turns out to have thoughts and opinions of her own. Arcadia, the only white woman in the book tells her of local history and Aycayia responds:
“I ask why everybody in Black Conch is black skinned
She told me how black people came
I ask her where are the red people like me
She told me they were mostly all dead and gone, murdered
I learn from Miss Rain
how the Castilian Admiral
MURDER all my people in a very short time
My people long dead
I sobbed
She told me many black people were murdered too
I ask if the Spanish Christians own everything now
She said not any more and turn red in her face
Like the whole thing happen in a short time
Only five hundred years when the world is very old
This all happen quickly
My family own all of this part of the island she say
Land is not to be owned I tell her.”
The prose is literary and poetic and there are layers of meaning. I had some questions. The main black female character is one of the antagonists with no redeeming features. There are lots of threads: toxic masculinity, land ownership following slavery, folklore and myth, jealousy, community tensions, patriarchy, the nature of romance, the unfinished history of colonialism and so on. Here no one can escape the past and its legacies and the novel draws on demands of the marginalised for dignity and respect.
David writes in his journal:
“That mermaid be a revolutionary.”
And that would be no bad thing.

[Susie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 I’m glad to be finished with the sexing and the in and out. I can appreciate the literary accomplishment however I did not enjoy this one. The sex scenes were cringeworthy and it seemed to go on forever despite being relatively short. Not for me.

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say this wild and original story is merely the tale of a mermaid who lived in the Caribbean and was captured by fishermen in 1976 and brought to the island of Black Conch would be like saying the Pacific Ocean is a large puddle.

I don’t know where to begin to talk about this book, except to say that it came to me as I was editing a nonfiction memoir dealing with racism and dying as it unwinds a travelogue of sailing around the Caribbean and South Pacific. And both these books (Mermaid and my editing gig) were preceded by a slew of books about racism and antiracism and all the history of this that has been whitewashed out of American history, culminating in Mary Trump’s volcanic summation of it all in The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal .

The Mermaid of Black Conch fits perfectly in this canon. The order of books and the experiences I have had reading and editing must have been orchestrated by some All-Knowing Reader’s God Conductor with impeccable plot-making skill.

The mermaid is a real character in the myth that we are all living in—a 400-year story where we think we can own or control one another, where power is currency, and where this delusion is driving us to a kind of Armageddon, that may be a requirement of rebirth.

The writing, imagination, and story are just wonderful. How much you decide to think about it is up to each reader. I suspect I’ll have this book in my subliminal mind for a long time.

[K.J. Charles]

There is a lot to like about this. I loved the description of the catching of the mermaid, and the brutal soulless greed of the USian sport fisherman who wants to sell her and never mind that she's clearly a conscious person. This book is very much about colonialism, greed, the lasting trauma of enslavement, the treating of other people as less than human. It's also a lot about sex (the writing of which is done in a very earthy way), the desire and entitlement of men, the multiple ways that can ruin women. And it's about the forgetting of people's history, the fragility of memory and community. There's a lot there.

I didn't quite feel it came together for me. Possibly that's in the structure, which switches from 1970s present to 2015 reminiscing to the mermaid's thoughts at unspecified times, I assume as a deliberate unmooring effect, but it did make me feel unmoored. And the pacing becomes very slow through the middle after a terrific start. It's really marvellously and vividly imagined, with great atmosphere, and a lot to think about: I just wanted a little more plot. But that's very often magic realism for you, and I am a very plot driven reader, so.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Library Audiobook….read by Vivienne Acheampong, and Ben Onwukue
…..7 hours and 36 minutes.

Winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award.
and ……*WOW* ….It’s soooo unique … creative ….ENCHANTING…. ENJOYABLE ….and POWERFUL …
….one of those books that is much more experiential than any review could portray.

This book doesn’t ‘seem’ like anything that I would have normally chosen by myself. In fact I’m sure of it.
But I took a chance…..
Our Goodreads community…. continues to support of step out of our comfort zones….
[Betsy you were one of the inspiring reviews] ….
I got a good feeling about this odd sounding book
— and sure enough it was a VERY ENJOYABLE LISTENING TREASURE!!!

The audiobook readers were outstanding — exceptionally great! As was the occasional lovely guitar playing… in between changing voices with our strong female/male alternating voices.

The story itself is mesmerizing and mystical in all the best ways.
Aycayia is a one of a kind Red colored mermaid. She used to be human, but was punished by jealous wives (cursed by her beauty)and made to live in sea as a mermaid.
When a fisherman, an American, named David, discovers her while fishing off the island of Black Conch, a tourist visiting the Caribbean, during the 70’s, he’s never been more enchanted by anyone in his life.
It’s the perfect Mermaid story….with more substantial depth than simply a fairytale.

David rescues her, hides her, brings her home and begins to transform her back into a woman.
Sing along … 🎼🎤….
“Isn’t it neat? Wouldn’t ya think my collection’s complete? The girl who has everything? …
No, this isn’t the Disney movie, “The Little Mermaid” …
with a hit song “Part of Your World” that every little girl sang at home ‘over-and-over’ driving her parents crazy ….
But “The Mermaid of Black
Conch does have similar romantic-love feelings.

There are also deeper themes about colonialism, racial tragic history—enslavement, immigration, indigenous genocide, freedom, and womanhood.

This was my first book I’ve read (listened) by author Monique Roffey. Her writing is gorgeous and completely engrossing.
It won’t be my last.

“He wanted to keep her safe, always. But he also suspected that wasn’t what she wanted, or needed. In fact, now she had the sneakers, he expected her to disappear some day, just like she appeared”.

As a woman— with sneakers myself …
I love the fantasy of having a fin and swimming with the fishes in the sea…..even for a day…
But….
I am forever moved and reminded …. (crappy hardships & injustice as it often still stands)….
I’m proud to be a part of the female tribe!

Awesome Audio!!!!

[H.L.H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

WHEW.

This could have illuminated the narcissism-born blindspots of the explorers and their successors. This could have been a subversive commentary on the damage colonialism has done to generations of Indigenous and Afro Carribean people; lost knowledge, culture, faith, science, etc. This could have been an examination of the fear and exploitation of young women's sexuality, and male entitlement to feminine bodies. This could have been a parable for the effects unfettered capitalism has had on tropical regions, which have been hit head-on with the consequences of climate change already. This could have torn the whole Manifest Destiny idea a new one.

Instead, this is a horny book about a bunch of men and boys wanting to fuck and/or kill a young and innocent (barf) yet ancient and wise (???) mermaid.

I have to mention that this mermaid had been a young performer who was cursed with a mermaid tail by jealous women of her community because they feared their husbands wouldn't be able to resist their desires for her. Put a pin in that.

SPOILER: When the mermaid finally has sex after changing back into human form, she's like, "yeah I understand why those women cursed me all those years ago." What a backwards, archaic thought! Pleasure makes women deserving of punishand restriction? My Catholic shame just twitched.

The fisher who "saves" her and then fucks her (power dynamic here is appalling considering she was bound to his bathtub and then his bed for weeks) is all proud about marking his territory and making her into a Full Woman, too. He keeps describing her as childlike and it made me sick. I was hoping this daughter/lover infantilizing thing would turn out to be a joke, that he would receive consequences and learn that he could admire someone without getting his penis involved, but this book seems sincere in its male-gazeyness. It reads like bad erotica written by a teenager. You really don't have to talk about sexing and boners this much in a book to get the idea across: she was so beautiful and so special that the men cOuLd'Nt CoNtRoL tHeMsElVeS!!! He sexualizes all her vulnerabilities like a predator.

Furthermore, the reverence these characters have for the mermaid as some symbol for primitive/uncorrupted humanity, being presumably Taino, is alarming. The fisher David goes on these diatribes about her connection to the "ancient times," in the same way annoying male feminists like to center themselves in praising women as superior-earthly-mother-pussypower-goddesses, completely unprompted. This speaks both to the author's awareness of some of the history of that region, and her unwillingness to do anything with it but grovel-- out of fear/guilt? I don't know. The whole book has a thread of gross fetishy language about the "exterminated" Taino people, as well as stereotypes about Black people. And all that "more connected to the Earth" stuff left a really sour taste. The author is white, too!? This makes any incorporating of Carribean culture and history seem even more questionable and voyeuristic; I don't care where she was born.

Writing style was okay, if self-objectifying. Content was out of touch. As far as I'm concerned, this is an accidental horror novel.

Lesson: If you're going to write about a colonized land and people, you need to decolonize your thinking and your writing.

[John Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Winner 2020 Costa Book of the Year and Costa Novel award.
Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize

Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch is a special and deep book with a lot of heart.

A beautifully, subtly written tale of an ancient woman, Aycayia, cursed to be a mermaid, captured in a fishing competition by white USA men then rescued by David Baptiste, a local fisherman who falls in love with her.

The events mostly occur in 1976 around St Constance a village on the Caribbean island, Black Conch, in the lead up to the 1976 Caribbean typhoon. Sections are in the form of journal entries as David retells the events, written during the years 2015/16. Other passages are in gorgeous verse from Aycayia's perspective, detailing her experience of this transformation as a mermaid. There are also wonderful descriptions of her now ancient connection with nature, especially the sea and its creatures.

This is a book about transformation and change. It's about how Aycayia changes and in her encounter with others (David Baptiste, a white woman, Arcadia Rain, and her deaf son Reggie, among others) transforms them. So in some ways it's about the transformative power and potential of myth and storytelling and love.

David Baptiste through loving and being loved by Aycayia, comes to reconsider and experience differently what masculinity, desire and love are. There are some just brilliant passages on this theme conveyed with a lyrical eroticism. The mermaid's transformation upends and subverts many gender stereotypes that he and others have lived with, opening other possibilities for them. The book also deals powerfully and in rich, unexpected ways with themes of race and colonialism, sexuality , power and freedom, change and so on. But all these themes skillfully emerge from the characters and the events. The book for me has a earthy, grounded and yet elusively magical and mythic tone.

In his review Gumble's Yard quotes the following which nicely introduces the book:

“Every afternoon, around three o’clock, David dropped Aycayia to Miss Rain’s for lessons. There at the table in the grand room with wooden floors, sat an indigenous woman of the Caribbean; cursed to be a mermaid by her own sisterhood, whose people had all but died out, slaughtered by the Castilian Admiral and his kind; a woman who, as a mermaid, was pulled out of the sea by Yankee men who wanted to auction her off and if not that, stuff her and keep her as a trophy; a woman who was rescued by a Black Conch fisherman; a mermaid who had come back to live as a woman of the Caribbean again. She sat quietly as she learnt language again, from another woman she wasn’t sure she could trust. This woman was white, dappled with freckles, and no matter what she wasn’t, she was of the type who had wiped her people out. Arcadia was self conscious, because she only spoke Black Conch English, a mixture of words from the oppressor and the oppressed. "

Gumble's review is great and how I became aware of this outstanding novel.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Highly recommended, an unexpected highlight read of 2020 for me.

[Kamil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hardly ever one sees a book-winning Costa ending up on the Republic of Consciousness longlist.

Intrigued I picked it up.

It's good, it's really fine, I'm just getting old and have such a low tolerance for all this magical realism whimsicality.
I prefer when it's substituted with a realistic description allowing me to see characters more as fully fleshed human beings.

Of course, it can be both, it can refer to the magic of local myths and legends and at the same time offer a great deal of realism. When those two come together brilliance can be born (Marquez) but more often the magic is served to make up for the lack of psyche exploration.

I'm not saying Roffey's characters were cartoonish, but some work could be done there, to deepen the exploration of the guilt of colonialism or troubled relation mixed couples have in this part of the world, or our attitude to others (it really doesn't have to be a mermaid) or even to explore beauty is a wound trope... we have all of that drafted in Roffey's novel but not explored enough to my taste.

There's a lot of people that love this book, I just could bring myself to feel the same. But it's fine.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, that was a lot of sexing. In many ways, I benefitted from this being a quick read, that I went into with my expectations tempered (thanks book club!). Certainly, if I'd expected this to be a magic-realist mermaid origin story, perhaps an exploration of culture I'd have been disappointed. This really turned out to be a story about sexing. Perhaps there was some interesting stuff in here about a woman's sexual awakening, and the danger of being a woman in the world. But mostly it was just sexing, or thinking about sexing, or talking about sexing (please note, sexing is not my vocabulary choice). It's not a terrible book, as long as you go in expecting what you receive. I've left it mildly entertained, and a bit bemused.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in an imaginary Caribbean island in the 1970s, this novel is a love story between a mermaid and a fisherman. From the opening pages, describing the mermaid's horrifying, violent capture, Roffey writes in vivid, sensory detail about her transformation and her surroundings. For me, the love story was the least convincing part of the novel. There is a lot packed into these pages: the legacy of colonialism, racism and misogyny to name a few. There were times that it got away from me, but mostly it worked.

[Jenny Lawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark Caribbean literature filled with magical realism. Sexuality, identify, control. It was a little bleaker than what I was looking for, but still good.

[Jodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my gosh—what an incredible story!! The Mermaid of Black Conch HAS IT ALL. The story is so fascinating; I was absolutely enthralled. And exciting?! Holy cow! When the awful Americans are out on the water, trying to reel in their championship fish (only readers are aware it’s actually a mermaid) the writing is mind-blowingly exhilarating! Ms Roffey really knows how to write! But it’s also heartbreakingly sad at times. After all, it’s a love story of sorts—in a ‘love found and love lost’ kind of way. Much of the dialogue is written in the local vernacular which I loved and found simple to follow; it also created a bit of amusement, now and then. In addition, you’ll have no trouble finding aspects of mystery, lawlessness, and thrills included. Overall, this book is simply AMAZING! I really don’t know how I could have enjoyed the book any more than I did, because I loved every single word—start to finish.🥰

The book speaks of Caribbean culture, the history of the islands, their legends and their myths. In her Acknowledgements, Roffey notes the idea for the book was based, in part, on these legends, but also on her dreams and, most notably, Pablo Neruda’s poem The Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks. And having just read the poem, I admit the similarities are undeniable.

So, it’s no secret that the book is about a mermaid who is caught, but there’s so much more to the story! And because I dislike reading reviews that summarize the entire book, I’m not going to say much more than that. Besides, if you plan on reading the book—and you definitely should—it’ll be so much more fun to experience everything with fresh, new eyes! You’ll also understand what I meant when I wrote that the book has it all—there really is something for lovers of every genre.

The Mermaid of Black Conch is a truly magnificent story. It’ll bring out a plethora of emotions! And it’s a book I’m certain you will never, ever forget.

5 I’m-in-love-with-this-story stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Maddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a gem of a book this one is.
Beautiful story that drew me in and kept my attention throughout written in a rich, almost poetic language.
Story of love and loss, grief and joy, full of emotion and just very unique. I really enjoyed it.

[charlie medusa · Rating 5 out of 5]

c'était une tuerie !!!!!!!!!!! je suis réellement subjuguée par ce livre c'était beau et vénéneux et triste et juste et c'est ça le réalisme magique que nous voulons dans nos vies hihi ^^ trop contente de voir que le roman, écrit par une femme britannico-trinidadienne, a été traduit par Gerty Dambury, une dramaturge, romancière et poétesse guadeloupéenne, qui rend pleinement justice à la langue et à la culture et aux savoirs de l'autrice !!! j'ai lu pas mal de critiques qui s'agacent de l'omniprésence du sexe dans le livre et euh a-t-on lu le même roman ? jsp je demande hein le livre prouve littéralement par A+B que le désir sexuel des hommes détruit et ostracise les femmes et les monte les unes contre les autres genre littéralement l'héroïne en est l'exemplification même bref je suis un peu #éberluée car le livre me semble précisément très juste et lucide sur la sexualisation de la figure mythique de la sirène et donne les larmes aux yeux face à Aycayia qui veut juste tout bonnement vivre sa vie et qui se retrouve fétichisée et bannie et maudite à tout-va car elle a simplement eu l'audace ! d'être une femme et d'avoir un corps bref ajoutez à ça la langue très belle, des scènes d'une iconicité rare (la scène de la pêche au deuxième chapitre... j'ai eu des frissons vous m'entendez des frissons) bref bravo le livre lisez en plus ça s'inspire d'une légende taïno très très touchante bref allez-y !

qui sont les Taïno me direz-vous eh bien moi-même je ne le savais pas donc voici (source wikipédia dsl je ne suis pas une critique professionnelle juste une personne silly goofy traînant sur goodreads trop souvent) : les Taïnos sont une ethnie amérindienne qui occupait les grandes Antilles lors de l'arrivée des Européens au 15e siècle. Malgré leur quasi-disparition au 16e siècle, beaucoup d'Antillais, plus particulièrement des Cubains, Haïtiens, Portoricains et Dominicains, ont des origines taïnos

[Anita Pomerantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, anyone who knows me as a reader knows this book isn't going to be my cup of tea. I really don't like magical realism no matter how many awards the book has won.

However, with the exception of two rainstorms (fish and like, jellyfish, raining down from the sky), Roffey manages to make this story of a mermaid believable. So it wasn't my skepticism that kept me from fully embracing this story.

In fact, chapter 2, entitled "Dauntless" was one incredible piece of writing. In it, Roffey really shows her strengths which I would characterize as terrific descriptions coupled with the ability to escalate tension. If I were teaching a writing class, I would use this chapter. If the whole book echoed this chapter, it would be certainly been five stars for me.

Unfortunately, these strengths seem to be offset by dialogue that just didn't work for me. The mermaid's dialogue was especially grating because it was in poetry form. Bad poetry. Maybe I'm not a person who really has the background to be a judge of poems, but I really did not find it lyrical, nor did it help create the character or add anything to the story. It's a out of the box structure that has no real purpose, and I was not a fan.

The plot and themes of the book were interesting enough, weaving in criminal behavior, love stories, and historical racism in a unique Caribbean setting.

I think fans of magical realism might really find the book worthwhile, but all in all, not my type of book, so hard for me to be too judgmental in either direction.

[amie · Rating 1 out of 5]

(TW: SA)

“Each man felt a deep tug in his crotch. The old man wanted to take out his dick and piss all over her. The younger men fought hard to keep a cockstand from bouncing up in their pants.”

“Then he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his shirts and pulled out his soft pink dick and showed it to her, asking her if she would like to suck it. […] He dangled his chubby thing in front of her face as if it were a juicy worm. […] Then he wipes it across her face and laughed and said he was the only man on earth to fuck a mermaid and then he grabbed her and tried to hump her from behind. […] Then, he pissed copiously on her flanks, waving his thing as if to hose her down.”

“I was aroused. She had a young girl’s breasts, ripe and pointed”


????????????????????

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

enerally when I start to read a book, I need a couple of pages to fully sink into it. With The Mermaid of Black Conch, I was ensnared from the first sentence. As one can guess this will be a glowing review.

The book is primarily a flashback. In 1976 A fisherman, David Baptiste in the Caribbean island of Black Conch, spots a mermaid. The sighting changes his life in many ways. This part of the story is in the form of diary excerpts taking place during the years 2015/16.

During a fishing competition a couple of wealthy Americans manage to capture the mermaid and plan to exploit her, that is until David saves her. These sections are narrated by the author.

There are other sections narrated by the mermaid, Aycayia. These are in verse and tell the mermaid’s backstory. As someone who is interested in mythology, I did a quick search on the mermaid’s name and I was pleased to find out that Aycayia was a mythological figure and was a beautiful woman who was cursed to be a mermaid as she made the elders jealous. Like the sirens in Greek mythology Aycayia also possess a haunting singing voice which does attract people.

As soon as David takes her away to his house, with the intention of caring for her, then setting her free, Aycayia undergoes some changes, which do affect the village in many different ways.

At face value The Mermaid of Black Conch can be taken as a good old fashioned story. There’s all the elements there : magic, adventure, some surprises, love and an epic conclusion. It does go deeper, but in a subtle manner.

I saw The Mermaid.. as a commentary on gender. Aycayia is punished by the gods for being beautiful but the same thing happens with one with normal citizens. There is an incident where a jealous neighbor does her best to ruin Aycayia. There is also a scene where two of the main protagonists are wondering why women tend not to get along with each other. Saying that, including Acycayia, the other female characters are strong and destroy stereotypical concepts some of the male characters in the book have about women. Elsewhere one of the Americans in the novel bullies his son for not liking masculine pursuits.

Race also plays a role in the story. Most of the characters in the book are conscious of The Caribbean’s history of colonisers. At one point David Baptiste regrets that his surname is a French one. The only major white character, Arcadia Rain (the Americans only make brief appearances in the beginning and end) is more like her Caribbean neighbors as she speaks the dialect. Coming from an island that has been under many different occupations, I was able to relate to this aspect of the book.

Freedom is another theme. Acyayia’s transformation frees her of the curse. Arcadia is free from her connections with white people when her house, built by slaves, is destroyed. Arcadia’s deaf and dumb son, Reggie cannot really experience the nastier elements of the world so he free from evil. David, by documenting his side of the story is finally letting his emotions escape so partly this book is a form of release.

The Mermaid of Black Conch is an insightful read. Not only does it work as an engrossing story but there’s a lot of layers to uncover. This is a rich novel that should be embraced by everybody.

Many thanks to Peepal Tree Press for providing a copy of The Mermaid of Black Conch