This is framed as an epic crime novel but it's just your typical story about the West Indies and what a woman finds herself doing to make it in Europe. She ends up doing what anyone else would in her situation. A lot of grisly tales about exploitation, assimilation, racism, nationalism and a life of being an outsider and a foreigner, no different than the same odds Black people overcome in general.
The only redemption in this story is that the woman learns how to get about without relying on men, but the angst of dating men is not far behind. It goes back and forth in time too much for my tastes and can be a bit confusing if you're not paying close attention. She wants to be involved with a man but can't learn how to do so without undoing everything she's accomplished to reinvent herself and keep preventing people from learning the truth and the identities she's appropriated. Some women are just put in those unfortunate series of circumstances and some create circumstances to get through life. It is what it is.
We already know that we have a hard time in Europe and we know what it was like for our grandparents back in the twentieth century so I don't really understand how this story is groundbreaking when a lot of our elders went through similar things. Things haven't changed that much and a lot has remained the same.
The only redemption in this story is that the woman learns how to get about without relying on men, but the angst of dating men is not far behind. It goes back and forth in time too much for my tastes and can be a bit confusing if you're not paying close attention. She wants to be involved with a man but can't learn how to do so without undoing everything she's accomplished to reinvent herself and keep preventing people from learning the truth and the identities she's appropriated. Some women are just put in those unfortunate series of circumstances and some create circumstances to get through life. It is what it is.
We already know that we have a hard time in Europe and we know what it was like for our grandparents back in the twentieth century so I don't really understand how this story is groundbreaking when a lot of our elders went through similar things. Things haven't changed that much and a lot has remained the same.