Review of Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique

In her debut novel, Land of Love and Drowning, Tiphanie Yanique weaves Caribbean historical fact and fiction into a compelling story of love, heartbreak, and loss that gracefully blurs the lines between contemporary fiction and fantasy.

Click the link to hear me read an excerpt from the novel, in character as Annette:

The story begins with sea captain Owen Arthur Bradshaw, his wife Antionette, and his mistress, Rebekah. Rebekah is known as an obeah woman (obeah is a Caribbean term dealing with the practice of witchcraft or magic) and it is widely believed throughout St. Thomas that she used her powers to drive her Navy husband away, and to lure and keep Captain Bradshaw.  He fathers two children with his wife, Eeona and Annette, and an illegitimate son with Rebekah named Jacob.  The lives of these three children will become intertwined in ways that send shock waves through the next generation.

Tiphanie Yanique was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands and currently lives in New Rochelle, NY with her husband-the photographer Moses Djeli, and their two children.  Land of Love and Drowning is her first novel and it has received several awards, including the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction.  She is also the author of a collection of short stories entitled How to Escape from a Leper Colony, and is a professor at the New School in the MFA program.

Land of Love and Drowning is part love story, part fable, and part history lesson.  While Ms. Yanique writes of the magic spun by Rebekah, Eeona, and Annette, she creates her own magic with an elegant lyricism and poetical style that draws readers in and leaves them captured under the spell of the Bradshaw women and the mystical beauty and power of the Caribbean.  As a huge fan and supporter of Caribbean arts and literature, I am thrilled to have discovered a new talent in Ms. Yanique and will be eagerly awaiting her forthcoming works.  Fans of Colin Channer, Paule Marshall, Elizabeth Nunez, and Edwidge Danticat-there is a new Caribbean writer in our midst who is poised to take her place as a torchbearer of the authentic island narrative and culture.

Review of What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan

Let me start by saying that there are no spoiler alerts in this blog (I hate spoilers!!!) but I will issue a strong warning:  Reading this novel may require a strong dose of caffeine to function the next day because you will really be tempted to stay up late into the night to finish!  I turned the last page at 12:48 am and it was well worth it!

Rachel Jenner is still reeling from her divorce from her successful pediatric surgeon husband, John, who left the day after Christmas for a younger co-worker.  Nearly a year later, she is still struggling in her role as a single mother when a routine walk through the woods with their son Ben turns into every parents' worst nightmare.  She allows him to run ahead to the swing and when she arrives, he is gone.  His dog, Skittle, later reappears with a broken leg and the massive police search that ensues soon finds the clothes that Ben was wearing stuffed into a bag.  As the hours turn into days, Rachel and John are driven to the edge of insanity as they fear the worst.  The media frenzy, driven by social media, quickly turns on Rachel and casts blame and suspicion on her, heaping on to the guilt that she feels for allowing Ben to run ahead.  She is castigated online, journalists camp out in front of her home, and the public judgment escalates into vandalism and violence.   Making matters even worse, as the list of credible suspects emerges, Rachel realizes that even those closest to her are not who they seem and the number of people that she can trust shrinks daily.  Rachel's narration of the unraveling of her life is juxtaposed with the story of Jim Clemo, the lead investigator on the team searching for Ben.   His own secrets, as well as the personal relationship that he has with one of the female officers on the case, turn out to play a pivotal role in the search.

Gilly Macmillan is a wife, mother, photographer, and lecturer of photography.  She grew up in the United Kingdom and as a teen, moved with her family to Northern California.  She returned to the UK for college, earning degrees in Art and Art History from Bristol University and Courtald Institute of Art in London.  She lives in Bristol with her family.  What She Knew is her first novel.

What She Knew is a thrilling debut novel filled with plot twists, long-buried secrets, and thoughtful insight into what happens when unexpected tragedy upends the lives of a family, and how that tragedy reveals how little we often really know about those closest to us.  The opening line of the novel drives this point home, "in the eyes of others, we're often not who we imagine ourselves to be". Macmillan creates a realistic, introspective protagonist in Rachel, one whom readers can sympathize with despite her admitted shortcomings.  Even with Rachel's first-person disclosure however, there are still things about herself that she  doesn't realize and that are slowly revealed as the search for Ben continues.  The novel is also a quiet commentary on modern day social media and how it is used to allow people to anonymously pass judgment and make statements that they most likely wouldn't say face-to-face.  The Internet allows us to indulge our rubbernecking tendencies-that nearly universal human trait of being horrified yet secretly entertained by the tragedies of others.  As Rachel puts it, "we all love to be thrilled by the vicarious experience of other people's ghastly lives after all".   What She Knew is a tightly written, well-paced thriller that represents a more than worthy first effort from Macmillan.  Readers should look forward to more work from this new author.