Its publisher calls Anna In-Between "Elizabeth Nunez's finest literary achievement to date." It's hard to argue with that, simply because Anna In-Between might just be the best book she's written–and one of the best books of the year. Nunez, a Trinidad-born writer and the Provost of Medgar Evans College, New York, doesn't lack for literary cred. Her six previous novels have included prize-winners and generally got good reviews. However, Anna's sparkling prose, dead-right characterisations and deftly rendered landscapes put this book in a class by itself.
The central character in the novel is Anna Sinclair, who left her Caribbean island home as a teen and now lives in New York. Nunez admitted in an interview, the book has some autobiographical tendencies, but where she is a university lecturer and author, Anna is a successful book editor. Coming home for a holiday, the protagonist discovers that her proper middle-class mother has advanced breast cancer, and that her father has known about it for some time without doing anything about it. Life goes on for them as they negotiate the planting of the orchids by Singh, the family's gardener, the serving of meals by Lydia, the black housekeeper, the father's tending of his fish pond, the mother's subtle antagonising of Anna, their only child.
That situation opens the door to a crafty exploration of migration, marriage, family, class, race and colonialism. These are familiar themes in Nunez's work, but here they are handled more finely than anywhere else in her oeuvre, growing as organically as the rare orchids the parents have harvested from the forest in their youth. "Nobody likes you to bleed all over them," her mother said. Anna had just turned eight. The doll she got for her birthday had slipped from her hands and fallen on the concrete walkway. Its brittle surface cracked and Anna screamed. She was inconsolable for days. "Crying excessively is a character flaw," her mother said. In her parents' social circles, any weakness is a character flaw.
Failure is a character flaw. Sickness is not to be discussed; death is not to be discussed. Sickness and death are the ultimate evidence of weakness and failure. The problem with the lower classes, her parents' friends say, is their lack of control over their emotions, over their bodies. They bleed all over each other. There is something of Virginia Woolf's careful attention to domestic detail in this novel, something of Woolf's vindication of a wife's implicit control of her family's destiny. Like Woolf, too, Nunez uses clean, crisp language to elucidate sticky topics with precision but retains the humanity of a woman searching for her place in the world. The story is very much an immigrant's tale but is told with universal appeal.
Nunez's last book, Prospero's Daughter, was founded on an elaborate Shakespearean conceit: Prospero, Miranda and Caliban, the core characters of The Tempest, were characters in a contemporary Caribbean tale. Nothing so fanciful motivates Anna In-Between. It is a straightforward story, plainly told. That makes its accomplishment even more startling. There are no bells or whistles here, just really good writing. Anna In-Between is published by Brooklyn-based independent imprint Akashic Books. It is available at The Reader's Bookshop, St James, and Paper Based, The Normandie, St Ann's.
Lisa Allen-Agostini is the author of The Chalice Project (Macmillan Caribbean) and co-editor of Trinidad Noir (Akashic Books).
