Hungry Ghosts: A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick

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Kevin Jared Hosein is an expert storyteller, how he is able to tell nuanced story rich with history, and explores classism, racism, religion, traditions, jealousy, love and violence is truly magical. Displayed behind the glass were bath towels curled up like sugar-frosted cinnamon rolls, large jugs of polychromatic confectioneries, ladies’ hats snug on faceless plastic heads, decorative boxes with little animals painted on the sides. Hosein immediately immerses the reader into the post-plantation landscape of multiracial and multicultural 1940s Trinidad, brimming with (sometimes overly) lush descriptions of flora, fauna, and food. This image is a metaphor that enhances the author’s portrayal of Trinidad and Tobago in the 1940s, when the island was lurching through the final stages of American occupation and British colonialism. Gradually, the women’s fragmentary entries come to reveal a changing climate, the invisibility of women’s work, and the perseverance of unofficial histories.

Her eyes limpid, tiny black splotches dotting the whiskers, a pucker of scar tissue at her left thigh where she had a hotspot. My grandfather told me a story from when he was a teenager, about an aristocratic lady, the wife of an overseer, who was coming through the village and she tripped and fell in the mud. For a flicker, as if God made him see out of his father's eyes, he realised a life in the Changoor house. Atmospheric, immersive, un-put-down-able, truly impressive storytelling from a Caribbean voice you will want to hear from again…and again…. They are outcasts who live in a riverside shack because their father, now dead, was a mass murderer, a man “so reptile, that he might have been dredged from a bog”.The clerk then reached in himself and gave Hans a random four – the children inside got to choose which ones they wanted. Hungry Ghosts, set in Trinidad of the 1940's, is composed of histories passed from one generation to the next, demonstrating the power of oral tradition.

Fernández’s mind roams over a stunning array of topics: her mother’s epileptic spells, which cause her to black out; the lives of stars and “stellar memory”; Pinochet’s Caravan of Death, which scattered the bones of 26 people in the Atacama Desert in October 1973. At first glance, Hans and Shweta seem like a happy couple, Shweta a dutiful wife and Hans a hardworking, faithful husband. Passage”, his short story of 2018, told of a Trinidadian family who illegally cremated a dead child in the early 2000s. Yet a looming cloud of violence and narcissism pervades the island, prompting the reader's urge to scream a warning to the imperiled characters or to hold their breath, hoping against the odds that somehow the goodness of humanity will prevail.When he got to the top, he looked like he was about to yell something, but instead stole away from sight, the four boys now focused on keeping the dog from death. Just as Hans has to live with the consequences of his actions, as he grapples with the inability to live in two worlds at once, so do we all.

I am sad that I finished it and will miss the characters, but I am pretty sure this is a book that will be talked about in the coming months.A whorled-up pothound sat on the other side of the street, quietly growling at them every time they made eye contact. Forum for spirited and convivial discussion of fiction from around the world, with particular though not exclusive focus on 20th and 21st century fict Forum for spirited and convivial discussion of fiction from around the world, with particular though not exclusive focus on 20th and 21st century fiction recognized in US, UK, international, and other nation-specific prizes.