Si­mon Lee

Tri­ni-Irish Aman­da Smyth's sec­ond nov­el A Kind of Eden, launched by UK pub­lish­er Ser­pent's Tail last Thurs­day, mix­es gen­res, ro­mance and thriller, to present a dis­turb­ing yet au­then­tic pic­ture of post­mod­ern T&T in the noughties of the new mil­len­ni­um.

While the nov­el most­ly reads from an ex­pat per­spec­tive, it re­vers­es the weary ex­ot­ic trop­i­cal trope for what is fast be­com­ing the mode in much Caribbean fic­tion–which for now I'd clas­si­fy as trop­i­cal neo-goth­ic. Those who have dipped in­to the Noir com­pi­la­tions (par­tic­u­lary Haiti and Trinidad Noir) or even Marie Vieux-Chau­vet's ter­ri­fy­ing (and much ear­li­er) nov­el of Haiti's Du­va­lier regime, Love, Anger, Mad­ness, will find them­selves in fa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry: vi­o­lence, degra­da­tion and hor­ror su­per­im­posed on a fad­ing trop­i­cal land­scape or in­fer­nal ur­ban war­ren.

Re­view­ing this text presents chal­lenges on this side of the At­lantic which met­ro­pol­i­tan crit­ics don't face, yet which prob­a­bly add to its com­plex­i­ty. I'm re­mind­ed of Hait­ian nov­el­ist Dany La­fer­riere's I Am A Japan­ese Writer–a typ­i­cal­ly La­fer­riere stroke of lit­er­ary sub­ver­sion. Cur­rent­ly–as the Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val demon­strat­ed ear­li­er this year– the de­bate on ex­act­ly what con­sti­tutes a Caribbean writer/ Caribbean writ­ing is still roil­ing with all the volatil­i­ty of Do­mini­ca's Boil­ing Lake.

Those labour­ing in the feel­go­od work­shops of Cre­ative Writ­ing or crum­pling un­sat­is­fac­to­ry man­u­scripts a la Jean Rhys in her pro­tract­ed com­po­si­tion of The Wide Sar­gas­so Sea, will be mor­ti­fied (or amused) by La­fer­riere's coup in se­cur­ing a ma­jor ad­vance on the strength of his ti­tle alone. But be­yond his Anan­cyesque ma­nip­u­la­tion of the pub­lish­ing in­dus­try, La­fer­riere de­bunks the large­ly ir­rel­e­vant de­bate on Caribbean writ­ing with the sim­ple yet un­sim­plis­tic point that when his book is read by a Japan­ese (sub­sti­tute Mon­go­lian, Ital­ian, Russ­ian, Sene­galese) read­er, he ef­fec­tive­ly be­comes a Japan­ese writer.

Re­turn­ing to the re­view­er's chal­lenge, A Kind of Eden will, I sus­pect, evoke quite dif­fer­ent re­spons­es ei­ther side of the At­lantic. While it may be read in the UK as a thriller with trop­i­cal back­drop, shot through with re­flec­tions on such dis­parate is­sues as in­ter­ra­cial and gen­er­a­tional re­la­tion­ships, mor­tal­i­ty, grief, mar­riage, monogamy, fam­i­ly and fi­deli­ty, love, in­fat­u­a­tion and be­tray­al, a Caribbean and par­tic­u­lar­ly T&T au­di­ence may squirm at the re­al­i­ty of what we've been liv­ing these last two decades and are still in de­nial about.

It is how­ev­er, pre­cise­ly this re­al­i­ty, rip­ping through ide­alised ver­sions of lush land and beach­scapes, of laid-back or high­ly sex­u­alised na­tives ca­vort­ing in car­ni­val mode, which is the book's strength. Nei­ther Trinidad nor To­ba­go is spared and in the process Smyth ques­tions the va­lid­i­ty of na­tion-build­ing texts es­poused by post­colo­nial the­o­rists, at a time when any­one out­side the Cari­com in­ner cir­cle re­alis­es Caribbean na­tion­al­ism has im­plod­ed in a post­mod­ern danse macabre dri­ven by the same com­pla­cen­cy, greed, cor­rup­tion and in­su­lar­i­ty Smyth fo­cus­es on.

Lo­cal read­ers may wince at be­ing re­mind­ed of the gra­tu­itous vi­o­lence, hor­rif­ic mur­ders, rapes, child abuse, kid­nap­pings; the in­tran­si­gence, ig­no­rance and in­ep­ti­tude of our "pro­tec­tive ser­vices"; but then all this and more is fac­tion rather than fic­tion. There are sym­pa­thet­ic lo­cal char­ac­ters (Safiya, Mar­tin's love in­ter­est, Ter­rance the To­ba­go house­keep­er) be­sides the crew of To­bag­on­ian psy­chopaths who burst up­on us in the sec­ond, har­row­ing sec­tion of the nov­el.

If Smyth seems harsh on T&T she does not spare her Eng­lish po­lice­man pro­tag­o­nist Mar­tin Rawl­in­son, whose tra­jec­to­ry re­veals as much about out­sider per­cep­tions of the con­tem­po­rary Caribbean as it does about naivety and the hu­man con­di­tion.

Those met­ro­pol­i­tan re­view­ers with their re­strict­ed knowl­edge of the breadth of Caribbean writ­ing, com­pared Smyth's first nov­el Black Rock with Jean Rhys (" a pow­er­ful cock­tail of heat and beau­ti­ful cool­ness, writ­ten in a heady, mes­meris­ing yet translu­cent prose"). Quite apart from the fact that A Kind of Eden's point of view is mas­cu­line, al­though we might com­pare the Tri­ni Safiya and Eng­lish Miri­am and Geor­gia char­ac­ters with some of Rhys' op­pressed fe­male char­ac­ters, Smyth's new work is more rem­i­nis­cent of Mi­lan Kun­dera's provoca­tive re­flec­tions on the hu­man con­di­tion, al­though it lacks his sar­don­ic hu­mour.

A Kind of Eden is prob­a­bly one of the first (if not the first) nov­els which frame the post­colo­nial re­la­tion­ship be­tween the UK and its for­mer colony of T&T. Supreme­ly ig­no­rant as to where he's head­ed, re­tired 49-year old Eng­lish cop Mar­tin Rawl­in­son es­capes the grief of his el­dest daugh­ter's death by tak­ing up a con­tract with the T&T po­lice ser­vice; "Leav­ing Eng­land of­fered him a kind of re­lief. Since los­ing Beth they'd ex­ist­ed in a per­ma­nent state of grief....Here he was a free man."

Mar­tin's grief is sub­sumed in his af­fair with the much younger Safiya, a Wood­brook jour­nal­ist who may well be a sur­ro­gate for his dead daugh­ter. This again is new ter­ri­to­ry for a Caribbean nov­el �high­light­ing not just the prob­lem­at­ics of in­ter­ra­cial and gen­er­a­tion dif­fer­ent re­la­tion­ships but al­so the in­equal­i­ty they pose. For Safiya's moth­er, Mar­tin is a threat: "I don't want you in my house again. My daugh­ter is all I have...An old man like you should know bet­ter."

For Mar­tin, who is a po­ten­tial mid-life cri­sis/male menopause can­di­date, Safiya is an an­o­dyne he anes­thetis­es him­self with in the name of love: "...there is no rem­e­dy for love but to love more; let it take him where it will." While there is psy­cho­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Mar­tin's in­fat­u­a­tion, Smyth di­rects us back to the mo­tif of the Eu­ro­pean male who since colo­nial days and right in­to the post­colo­nial era comes to con­quer hearts and make his for­tune. This is an­oth­er theme, which how­ev­er un­com­fort­able, high­lights ex­ist­ing ten­sions be­tween for­mer colonis­ers and the colonised.

The old trop­i­cal trope is vi­cious­ly dis­man­tled in the sec­ond sec­tion along with delu­sions about T&T's de­vel­oped sta­tus. As Sher­ry, Mar­tin's Tri­ni house­keep­er re­marks: "Port-of-Spain is like Mi­a­mi with­out the po­lice. All those high-rise build­ings. Every­body keeps talk­ing about first world but there's noth­ing first world about our coun­try." Sim­i­lar­ly when Mar­tin's wife Miri­am first ar­rives in To­ba­go she pro­duces the usu­al touris­tic clich�s: "What an abun­dance of colour; what a wealth of beau­ty. This place is a kind of Eden." But be­fore the con­clu­sion of the trau­mat­ic sec­ond sec­tion she re­vis­es her ini­tial opin­ion: "She tells him she will nev­er come back here. This is not a par­adise; this is hell."

With­out dis­clos­ing too much de­tail of the sec­ond sec­tion (hell to the first sec­tion's par­adise?) suf­fice it to say that the para­noia and vi­o­lence it evokes are all too cred­i­ble. The de­cep­tive re­straint of the first part dis­solves in­to a night­mar­ish pace, punc­tu­at­ed by events we've come to dread read­ing about in the press, but which have been as much a fea­ture of Caribbean life and re­al­i­ty since Colum­bus. A Kind of Eden is an­oth­er side of the par­adise con­struct­ed in the Eu­ro­pean imag­i­nary. As Smyth shows us �now is the time for some se­ri­ous de­con­struc­tion.