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Popisho
A sensual novel, Popisho conjures a world where magic is everywhere, food is fate, politics are broken, and love awaits. Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something… The local name for it was cors. Magic, but more than magic. A gift, nah? Yes. From the gods: a thing that felt so inexpressibly your own.
Somewhere far away-- or maybe right nearby-- lies an archipelago called Popisho. A place of stunning beauty and incorrigible mischief, destiny and mystery, it is also a place in need of change.
Xavier Redchoose is the macaenus of his generation, anointed by the gods to make each resident one perfect meal when the time is right. Anise, his long lost love, is on a march toward reckoning with her healing powers. The governor’s daughter, Sonteine, is getting married, her father demanding a feast out of turn. And graffiti messages from an unknown source are asking hard questions. A storm is brewing. Before it comes, before the end of the day, this wildly imaginative narrative will take us across the islands, their history, and into the lives of unforgettable characters.
Somewhere far away-- or maybe right nearby-- lies an archipelago called Popisho. A place of stunning beauty and incorrigible mischief, destiny and mystery, it is also a place in need of change.
Xavier Redchoose is the macaenus of his generation, anointed by the gods to make each resident one perfect meal when the time is right. Anise, his long lost love, is on a march toward reckoning with her healing powers. The governor’s daughter, Sonteine, is getting married, her father demanding a feast out of turn. And graffiti messages from an unknown source are asking hard questions. A storm is brewing. Before it comes, before the end of the day, this wildly imaginative narrative will take us across the islands, their history, and into the lives of unforgettable characters.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2021
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March 23, 2022
Shortlisted for the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize, longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something-something, boy, a little something extra. The local name was cors. Magic, but more than magic. A gift, nah? Yes. From the gods: a thing so inexpressibly your own.
This One Sky Day is the wonderfully exuberant third novel from Leone Ross, published in the US as Popisho.
Leone Ross’s 1996 debut novel was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize) and her second novel, Orange Laughter followed in 1999.
She spent 15 years working on her next novel - which was to become This One Sky Day, - but during that period published and also edited short stories, featured in collections by the wonderful small indies Salt Publishing, Nightjar Press and Peepal Tree Press. And in 2017, the latter published her first collection, Come Let Us Sing Anyway. In the afterword to This One Sky Day, she opens by thanking Peepal Tree Press “beautifully saved me from obscurity.”
This One Sky Day was pre-empted by Faber in 2020, Ross saying: “When you write a book for fifteen years you can be forgiven for fearing it will never be published. After all this time, I’m overjoyed to share it. It’s about longing and addiction; about the bad choices we make that we can change even at that final hour and about all the flavours of love.”
This One Sky Day is heavily infused with magic realism. In a 2016 interview (https://web.archive.org/web/201610141...) Ross said:
The novel is set on the archipelego of Popisho, Ross taking the name from the Jamaican patois ‘Poppy Show’ (a corruption of ‘puppet show’, for a spectacle or for someone making a fool of themselves):
Xavier took a deep breath and stepped out into his yard. The dark garden poured out in front of him, and beyond that, the islands of Popisho. The Torn Poem was perfectly located on Battisient: right inside the capital Pretty Town but still private, on the cliff above the harbour. Up here, he could see his diners snaking across the sand towards him, then away afterwards, a silvery line of nourished people stretching back to the sea, like foam.
After he fed them, some swam, some danced.
An orange sliver climbed the horizon, no more than the peeping eye of an egg. He closed his eyes and began turning a single, slow circle, back straight, arms out and palms up. Beaches east and west, at the end of his fingertips; the old-gold bay and its harnessed fishing boats splintered across the soft water; the tall, thin schoolhouse; Bend Down Market; the solemn chiming Temple – why, his finger might just touch it; one of the toy factories, painted ugly green, like something you found up your nose after a bad cold; squat, creamy cottages spiralling into the hills, lit by front-yard cook-fires at night. Sometimes he visited the owners and offered them fire-dye in particular colours, so that his diners could admire the light. Yes, macaenus, they said, smiling at his quiet face. Of course, for you, and the gods that chose you.
He stopped circling and opened his eyes. Battisient’s sister island, Dukuyaie, glimmered in the distance, its thick hide grainy in the dawn. You could see the Dead Islands if you looked north and squinted: like a spray of wet, blue pebbles. It had been so long since he’d walked them.
The world was stirring awake again, and he had a list of things to do today.
Everyone in Popisho is born with a ‘cors’, a magical power of some sort, that eventually becomes manifest before they reach adulthood:
Some kinds of magic were immediately obvious – multiple limbs and prodigious strength, an extra row of teeth or the kind of height you could use for a ladder. Other babies arrived with subtler gifts, to be deciphered slowly: permanently pleasant breath, hair like thick silk with never a tangle, the balance of a cat, or look, my child can turn coconut water into any other taste you want! Xavier’s old friend Entaly had musical earlobes and three buttock-cheeks. Moue got tipsy on butterflies one night and told Xavier her cors – a row of extra taste buds, and try as she might, she was immune to the nefarious effects of liquor. Xavier wondered which look-close obeah woman had found that on her.
Mental accoutrement was rarer, but it happened – the ability to tell the future; time-juggling triplets; toddlers moving objects with a careless thought or setting angry fires. All this mind-cors made good money, but parents had to use extra discipline in the rearing. One act of youthful rebellion could be unfortunate – a girl down Dukuyaie killed her mother with a spiteful thought after the mother banned her from dancing with her belly-skin out-of-doors. Thank the gods, her sister was standing right there with her cors to restart a heart like a putt-putt engine.
But Ross also has made the point (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...) that magic realism is a way of deeply, and empathetically, exploring personal and political issues. She has explained her approach here (https://pen.org/the-pen-ten-leone-ros...
Xavier, one of the two main characters in the novel, can flavour food with his hands, and is the island’s 413th macaenus, a succession of anointed cooks, each chosen by their successor. During his allocated twenty years in the role, everyone in the island gets to eat once in his restaurant, the Torn Poem, their turn chosen by lot. He is also a “moth addict” - this is an island where people eat butterflies for pleasure, but where moths are a potent and addictive drug.
The other, Anise, has the power of diagnosing disease by touch - Hypertension felt like the strike of a heavy peasant drum; syphilis made the earlobes squelchy; toes smelled of cornmeal before a heart attack; squints developed late in life made a screeching sound, like mice in a field - and being able to heal.
The novel is set over just one day. Sonteine, daughter of the local Governor Bertrand Intisiar, is getting married and the Governor has ordered the recently widowered Xavier to prepare a feast for the population. He goes on the traditional ‘walkabout’ to gather the ingredients from the people, where he encounters Sonteine’s brother, Romanza, although he isn’t aware of his identity, as Romanza, rejected by his father due to his homosexuality, now lives with the indigent outcasts of the Dead Islands.
Anise was Xavier’s first real love, but the two were already engaged to others. Her marriage weakened by a succession of miscarriages, she has just been told that her husband (who works in the island’s toy factory, toys once made for the locals but now the island’s main source of exports) is having an affair and has made his lover pregnant. She is roaming the island looking for them.
Ross herself explains - and pictures - some of the other key characters here:
https://www.leoneross.com/this-one-sk...
(NB this is based on an earlier version of the novel so the quotes aren’t all in the final version)
The story that follows is expansive - over 450 pages and the novel was originally multiples of that side (350,000 words from over 500,000 words of material). Ross’s worldbuilding is highly imaginative, at times outrageously exuberant, although, as a magic realist novel, this isn’t for the reader looking for coherent explanations. Indeed there is a nice scene at the end (reminiscent of Colonel Aureliano Buendía being more impressed by ice than flying carpets) where the one thing that bemuses the islanders is a giant video screen.
Ross’s writing is highly corporeal, a celebration of bodies in all their forms, and women’s bodies in particular, as well as infused with flavours and foods. Popisho itself is in many respects a paradise: the people’s gifts, the natural beauty and abundance, its escape from the ravages of colonialism. But beneath the surface, and finally on ‘This One Sky Day’ coming to the surface, are the issues of political corruption, toxic masculinity and homophobia, addiction in many forms, socio-economic inequalities, intolerance of different people, sex-workers rights, the after-effects of colonialism (the one war in the island’s history is with some emancipated slaves who try to take possession of the lands), the trauma of miscarriages, and the socio-economic inequalities resulting from economic globalisation (as the 21st century version of colonialism).
Highly recommended - and a strong contender for literary prizes.
Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something-something, boy, a little something extra. The local name was cors. Magic, but more than magic. A gift, nah? Yes. From the gods: a thing so inexpressibly your own.
This One Sky Day is the wonderfully exuberant third novel from Leone Ross, published in the US as Popisho.
Leone Ross’s 1996 debut novel was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize) and her second novel, Orange Laughter followed in 1999.
She spent 15 years working on her next novel - which was to become This One Sky Day, - but during that period published and also edited short stories, featured in collections by the wonderful small indies Salt Publishing, Nightjar Press and Peepal Tree Press. And in 2017, the latter published her first collection, Come Let Us Sing Anyway. In the afterword to This One Sky Day, she opens by thanking Peepal Tree Press “beautifully saved me from obscurity.”
This One Sky Day was pre-empted by Faber in 2020, Ross saying: “When you write a book for fifteen years you can be forgiven for fearing it will never be published. After all this time, I’m overjoyed to share it. It’s about longing and addiction; about the bad choices we make that we can change even at that final hour and about all the flavours of love.”
This One Sky Day is heavily infused with magic realism. In a 2016 interview (https://web.archive.org/web/201610141...) Ross said:
I’m writing magic realism for a simple reason. It’s this: it’s fun. I was the kid who loved Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, who always loved weird crap, and so it took time for me to give myself permission to write weird crap. It took Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez at university for me to think, ‘oh my God, the adult version of weird crap, that’s so cool!’.
The novel is set on the archipelego of Popisho, Ross taking the name from the Jamaican patois ‘Poppy Show’ (a corruption of ‘puppet show’, for a spectacle or for someone making a fool of themselves):
Xavier took a deep breath and stepped out into his yard. The dark garden poured out in front of him, and beyond that, the islands of Popisho. The Torn Poem was perfectly located on Battisient: right inside the capital Pretty Town but still private, on the cliff above the harbour. Up here, he could see his diners snaking across the sand towards him, then away afterwards, a silvery line of nourished people stretching back to the sea, like foam.
After he fed them, some swam, some danced.
An orange sliver climbed the horizon, no more than the peeping eye of an egg. He closed his eyes and began turning a single, slow circle, back straight, arms out and palms up. Beaches east and west, at the end of his fingertips; the old-gold bay and its harnessed fishing boats splintered across the soft water; the tall, thin schoolhouse; Bend Down Market; the solemn chiming Temple – why, his finger might just touch it; one of the toy factories, painted ugly green, like something you found up your nose after a bad cold; squat, creamy cottages spiralling into the hills, lit by front-yard cook-fires at night. Sometimes he visited the owners and offered them fire-dye in particular colours, so that his diners could admire the light. Yes, macaenus, they said, smiling at his quiet face. Of course, for you, and the gods that chose you.
He stopped circling and opened his eyes. Battisient’s sister island, Dukuyaie, glimmered in the distance, its thick hide grainy in the dawn. You could see the Dead Islands if you looked north and squinted: like a spray of wet, blue pebbles. It had been so long since he’d walked them.
The world was stirring awake again, and he had a list of things to do today.
Everyone in Popisho is born with a ‘cors’, a magical power of some sort, that eventually becomes manifest before they reach adulthood:
Some kinds of magic were immediately obvious – multiple limbs and prodigious strength, an extra row of teeth or the kind of height you could use for a ladder. Other babies arrived with subtler gifts, to be deciphered slowly: permanently pleasant breath, hair like thick silk with never a tangle, the balance of a cat, or look, my child can turn coconut water into any other taste you want! Xavier’s old friend Entaly had musical earlobes and three buttock-cheeks. Moue got tipsy on butterflies one night and told Xavier her cors – a row of extra taste buds, and try as she might, she was immune to the nefarious effects of liquor. Xavier wondered which look-close obeah woman had found that on her.
Mental accoutrement was rarer, but it happened – the ability to tell the future; time-juggling triplets; toddlers moving objects with a careless thought or setting angry fires. All this mind-cors made good money, but parents had to use extra discipline in the rearing. One act of youthful rebellion could be unfortunate – a girl down Dukuyaie killed her mother with a spiteful thought after the mother banned her from dancing with her belly-skin out-of-doors. Thank the gods, her sister was standing right there with her cors to restart a heart like a putt-putt engine.
But Ross also has made the point (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...) that magic realism is a way of deeply, and empathetically, exploring personal and political issues. She has explained her approach here (https://pen.org/the-pen-ten-leone-ros...
Magic illuminates and amplifies reality. I use it as a way to punctuate, bring attention to, have fun with, satirize the reality of relationships and the complexity of social dynamics. Everyone in Popisho has a magical ability or “cors” that they are born with, and a whole organization of “obeah women” whose job it is to identify the magic and help them find mentors to enjoy it and use it well. Many are inspired by their own magic, but still others create hierarchies, use it to make money, or are disadvantaged socially because their cors is judged as small or useless. People get put into boxes or limited.
Additionally, cors is given by the gods as a gift, and so, you can’t exactly ignore it or toss it away because it’s part of a religious duty! This is just one example of the ways that magic realism can encourage us to think about the ways our human community works—or doesn’t. We come to Popisho on a day when the very earth is restless and causing strange things to happen—a collective dreaming, a sudden plague of physalis fruit. It’s the land’s reaction to the increasing threat of capitalism as the magic is beginning to be sold for profit.
Xavier, one of the two main characters in the novel, can flavour food with his hands, and is the island’s 413th macaenus, a succession of anointed cooks, each chosen by their successor. During his allocated twenty years in the role, everyone in the island gets to eat once in his restaurant, the Torn Poem, their turn chosen by lot. He is also a “moth addict” - this is an island where people eat butterflies for pleasure, but where moths are a potent and addictive drug.
The other, Anise, has the power of diagnosing disease by touch - Hypertension felt like the strike of a heavy peasant drum; syphilis made the earlobes squelchy; toes smelled of cornmeal before a heart attack; squints developed late in life made a screeching sound, like mice in a field - and being able to heal.
The novel is set over just one day. Sonteine, daughter of the local Governor Bertrand Intisiar, is getting married and the Governor has ordered the recently widowered Xavier to prepare a feast for the population. He goes on the traditional ‘walkabout’ to gather the ingredients from the people, where he encounters Sonteine’s brother, Romanza, although he isn’t aware of his identity, as Romanza, rejected by his father due to his homosexuality, now lives with the indigent outcasts of the Dead Islands.
Anise was Xavier’s first real love, but the two were already engaged to others. Her marriage weakened by a succession of miscarriages, she has just been told that her husband (who works in the island’s toy factory, toys once made for the locals but now the island’s main source of exports) is having an affair and has made his lover pregnant. She is roaming the island looking for them.
Ross herself explains - and pictures - some of the other key characters here:
https://www.leoneross.com/this-one-sk...
(NB this is based on an earlier version of the novel so the quotes aren’t all in the final version)
The story that follows is expansive - over 450 pages and the novel was originally multiples of that side (350,000 words from over 500,000 words of material). Ross’s worldbuilding is highly imaginative, at times outrageously exuberant, although, as a magic realist novel, this isn’t for the reader looking for coherent explanations. Indeed there is a nice scene at the end (reminiscent of Colonel Aureliano Buendía being more impressed by ice than flying carpets) where the one thing that bemuses the islanders is a giant video screen.
Ross’s writing is highly corporeal, a celebration of bodies in all their forms, and women’s bodies in particular, as well as infused with flavours and foods. Popisho itself is in many respects a paradise: the people’s gifts, the natural beauty and abundance, its escape from the ravages of colonialism. But beneath the surface, and finally on ‘This One Sky Day’ coming to the surface, are the issues of political corruption, toxic masculinity and homophobia, addiction in many forms, socio-economic inequalities, intolerance of different people, sex-workers rights, the after-effects of colonialism (the one war in the island’s history is with some emancipated slaves who try to take possession of the lands), the trauma of miscarriages, and the socio-economic inequalities resulting from economic globalisation (as the 21st century version of colonialism).
Highly recommended - and a strong contender for literary prizes.
March 23, 2022
Popisho is Leone Ross's labor of love, a book that was 15 years in the making. The novel, published in the UK as This One Sky Day, is set on an imaginary archipelago in the Caribbean, where each character is born with a special "cors" or magic power. The story leans heavily into magical realism and, often, leaves the realism behind. The characters are lush creations, brimming with emotions - joy, exuberance, pain, sadness - at levels that are so acute they are almost palpable. Popisho itself is a visceral world where vulvas and food are described in detail. The magical realism allows Ross to explore a number of themes - addiction, beauty, relationships, patriarchy, politics - in a way that invites conversation without shutting it down. Although the narrative often crawls at a glacial pace, there is real beauty in this world.
February 18, 2021
The Torn Poem Restaurant was located on a cliff above the harbor with a view of the islands of Popisho. "Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something extra. The local name was Cors. Magic, but more than magic...a gift...from the gods: a thing so inexpressibly your own...Cooking Cors were rare as hell in a man...but...Xavier could flavor food through the palms of his hands. Xavier's old friend Entaly had musical earlobes and three buttock cheeks".
After grueling training as the acolyte of retiring Macaenus Des'ree, Xavier was elevated to this exalted position. As Macaenus, his task was "to cook a meal for every single adult man and woman on Popisho. To delight a whole nation with his food...He tried to ignore it all: the worship, and the disapproval and the expectations". Xavier maintained a random guest list. "No one skips the line. No special treatment...". A letter from Governor Intiasar arrived addressed to Xavier Laurence Redchoose-the 413th Macaenus, announcing his daughter's engagement, requesting that Xavier prepare a traditional wedding night meal. Not so fast, governor!
It used to be part of the Macaenus's duties to perform a walkround for purchasing the necessary ingredients for a feast. "Look, Macaenus! Some of the traders he recognized from their bartering techniques...He felt like a dancer, back in the arms of a former partner: old friends with intimate half-forgotten memories. They worked hard, these people: farmers, bakers, butchers. He'd spent 20 years building relationships with them for the first pick of their freshest produce.
Sonteine Intiasar, the nervous bride to be, had a brother, Romanza. Disowned by their father, ZaZa had found happiness with Pilar, an indigent from the Dead Islands. Zaza became Pilar's acolyte and lover. The indigent people wore scant, frayed clothes...most had lost their capacity to blink and live in houses. They ate fruit, veggies, tubers, insects, occasional meat-and poison.
Intiasar was seeking another term as governor. Apparently a rival had been painting signs of criticism, exposes of rundown buildings and complaints of lower wages. A single missive, in orange paint, was posted everywhere "What's Your Alternative?"
"Popisho" by Leone Ross is a delightful romp into the world of magic realism. Xavier Redchoose was haunted by the ghost of his dearly departed wife and remorseful for not marrying his one true love. Strange occurrences abound. The toys from the Dukuyaie Toy Factory had disappeared. Women's private parts were falling out. A storm was brewing. Change was in the air. I highly recommend this imaginative, hilarious, mournful, playful read.
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
After grueling training as the acolyte of retiring Macaenus Des'ree, Xavier was elevated to this exalted position. As Macaenus, his task was "to cook a meal for every single adult man and woman on Popisho. To delight a whole nation with his food...He tried to ignore it all: the worship, and the disapproval and the expectations". Xavier maintained a random guest list. "No one skips the line. No special treatment...". A letter from Governor Intiasar arrived addressed to Xavier Laurence Redchoose-the 413th Macaenus, announcing his daughter's engagement, requesting that Xavier prepare a traditional wedding night meal. Not so fast, governor!
It used to be part of the Macaenus's duties to perform a walkround for purchasing the necessary ingredients for a feast. "Look, Macaenus! Some of the traders he recognized from their bartering techniques...He felt like a dancer, back in the arms of a former partner: old friends with intimate half-forgotten memories. They worked hard, these people: farmers, bakers, butchers. He'd spent 20 years building relationships with them for the first pick of their freshest produce.
Sonteine Intiasar, the nervous bride to be, had a brother, Romanza. Disowned by their father, ZaZa had found happiness with Pilar, an indigent from the Dead Islands. Zaza became Pilar's acolyte and lover. The indigent people wore scant, frayed clothes...most had lost their capacity to blink and live in houses. They ate fruit, veggies, tubers, insects, occasional meat-and poison.
Intiasar was seeking another term as governor. Apparently a rival had been painting signs of criticism, exposes of rundown buildings and complaints of lower wages. A single missive, in orange paint, was posted everywhere "What's Your Alternative?"
"Popisho" by Leone Ross is a delightful romp into the world of magic realism. Xavier Redchoose was haunted by the ghost of his dearly departed wife and remorseful for not marrying his one true love. Strange occurrences abound. The toys from the Dukuyaie Toy Factory had disappeared. Women's private parts were falling out. A storm was brewing. Change was in the air. I highly recommend this imaginative, hilarious, mournful, playful read.
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
March 23, 2022
Now longlisted for the 2022 Women's Prize. Shortlisted for the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize which decided to pick half its shortlist (including this one) from the next door University’s alumni as part of an extreme London bias.
An exuberant, enjoyable novel which starts as magic realism, aims for social commentary, heads for fantasy territory while flirting with absurdity but which at the end is a rather simple story of postponed and long thwarted love.
Overall a new genre - fictional activist magical exuberance (FAME).
This novel, the author’s third, and some fifteen years in the writing is set on a single day on the fictional archipelago of Popisho (from the Jamaican slang for foolishness – Poppy show), an Island where butterflies (which can be grabbed from the air and eaten) are like alcohol but moths and like Class A drugs, where everyone is born with “little something-something … a little something extra. The local name was cors. Magic, but more than magic. A gift, nah. Yes. From the gods: a thing so inexpressibly your own" and a gift curated by a group of wise-women – The Council of the Obeah Fatidique – the gift once discovered (and verified by the Obeah women) often defines people’s vocation.
The first character we meet (our first member of the thwarted love-pair) is Xavier – his cors is the ability to flavour food perfectly by hand (a skill which I will return to when discussing the author’s execution of the magic realism genre).
Xavier, due to his skills, was picked many years back as the island’s latest Macaenus (a kind of much celebrated, almost venerated official island cook who cooks a perfectly individually-calibrated meal for each inhabitant exactly once during his twenty year reign). Xavier was widowed exactly one year ago – his estranged wife seemingly having drowned herself and her ghost still seemingly wandering the island. Earlier in life he had many lovers including his predecessor as macaenus – the flamboyant and seductive Des’ree, as well as Anise (the girl he realises he should have married). He is also a reformed moth addict – now tempted to indulge again.
The Iocal Governor – Bertrand Intisar – is shortly up for re-election, and while the islands are increasingly prosperous, there is increasing disquiet (fuelled by a mysterious graffiti artist who paints in orange) at the corruption he seems to have bought to the Island fuelled by his time abroad: in particular the magical toys the Islanders loved for many years are now manufactured to his tastes in a huge factory and reserved for export only (their magic kept secret from the outside world, but the exact distribution of the proceeds kept secret from the inhabitants).
Intisar’s so far cors-less daughter – Sonteine is due to be married the next day – and, to gain some favorable PR he is putting pressure on Xavier both to let Sonteine as her husband jump his queue (by cooking for their wedding feast) but also to take part in one of the fabled walkabouts – when the Macaenus walks around the island gathering ingredients and menu ideas.
The other two main characters who with Xavier and Sonteine are travelling across the Island this day (the author talks of four such) are Anise and Romanza.
Anise is our other thwarted lover – despite her healing touch cors she has herself suffered a series of miscarrriages and her unwillingness to try again she hears this day has driven her husband to take another lover now pregnant. She sets off to find out more but ends up in a brothel for the point at which the novel turns rather absurd (more later) while she turns her thoughts back to Xavier .
Romanza is Sonteine’s brother/Intisar’s black sheep son – with a male lover, a lie-detecting cors and living among the indigent (a group of descendants of the Island’s Carib-equivalents) who live an alternative and simpler life (for example with an obsession with mild doses of poison) on some outlying Islands. Xavier and he cross paths and initially Xavier is inspired by him (not realising who he is) to source his food from among the indigents.
This is only a fraction of the novels ideas which also include shape shifting houses, an imminent “sweet-hurricane”, passing sea creatures which act as stepping stones, a fruit infestation, a campaigning radio presenter, an eccentric beauty contest and the novel’s high (or depending on your view) low point: the “pum-pum” incident with the Island’s women all finding that a crucial body part has fallen out.
This starts with the potential to examine female sexuality, sex-work, male/female differences but it is as though the author does not really know what to do with the idea, other than simply returning to it (I was reminded of a standing joke in a sit-com), as Michael Donkor in the Guardian says “the absurd conceit is at first striking and provocative; it loses its comic charge because it is returned to over and again without engaging development or expansion” – and eventually the author just abandons the idea and moves on to her next invention.
And I think this is ultimately the issue with the book in a literary sense.
The book is intended to be in the magic-realism genre. Now of course the literary-fiction master of that genre also set his novels in a Caribbean coastal setting – Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But what makes his work particularly striking is that the magic elements are incongruous to the reader – not because of their magic but because of the otherwise mundane (in the sense of earthly) setting of the rest of the novel.
Here the author I think has failed to pull off (or perhaps to appreciate) the tension that is necessary between magic and realism.
To use a book-appropriate analogy – she I think lacks the magic-realism corrs. Unlike Xavier her own cooking touch is too heavy on adding the magic seasoning so obscuring the underlying flavours of the sociopolitical realism dish.
And as a fantasy novel I do not think it quite works either – one of the reasons that the fantasy genre is so obsessed with series of novels, beyond just genre-expectations, is that they rely on careful world building and then exploration of that world. And again I did not feel that the author here spent enough time ever exploring the world she had built rather than just adding yet another element to the world.
But I would emphasise again that this was nevertheless a very distinctive and fantastically-imagined novel, one that is as vibrant as its beautifully coloured page edgings and which at the end is an exploration of addiction and celebration of the greatest addiction of all - love.
An exuberant, enjoyable novel which starts as magic realism, aims for social commentary, heads for fantasy territory while flirting with absurdity but which at the end is a rather simple story of postponed and long thwarted love.
Overall a new genre - fictional activist magical exuberance (FAME).
This novel, the author’s third, and some fifteen years in the writing is set on a single day on the fictional archipelago of Popisho (from the Jamaican slang for foolishness – Poppy show), an Island where butterflies (which can be grabbed from the air and eaten) are like alcohol but moths and like Class A drugs, where everyone is born with “little something-something … a little something extra. The local name was cors. Magic, but more than magic. A gift, nah. Yes. From the gods: a thing so inexpressibly your own" and a gift curated by a group of wise-women – The Council of the Obeah Fatidique – the gift once discovered (and verified by the Obeah women) often defines people’s vocation.
The first character we meet (our first member of the thwarted love-pair) is Xavier – his cors is the ability to flavour food perfectly by hand (a skill which I will return to when discussing the author’s execution of the magic realism genre).
Xavier, due to his skills, was picked many years back as the island’s latest Macaenus (a kind of much celebrated, almost venerated official island cook who cooks a perfectly individually-calibrated meal for each inhabitant exactly once during his twenty year reign). Xavier was widowed exactly one year ago – his estranged wife seemingly having drowned herself and her ghost still seemingly wandering the island. Earlier in life he had many lovers including his predecessor as macaenus – the flamboyant and seductive Des’ree, as well as Anise (the girl he realises he should have married). He is also a reformed moth addict – now tempted to indulge again.
The Iocal Governor – Bertrand Intisar – is shortly up for re-election, and while the islands are increasingly prosperous, there is increasing disquiet (fuelled by a mysterious graffiti artist who paints in orange) at the corruption he seems to have bought to the Island fuelled by his time abroad: in particular the magical toys the Islanders loved for many years are now manufactured to his tastes in a huge factory and reserved for export only (their magic kept secret from the outside world, but the exact distribution of the proceeds kept secret from the inhabitants).
Intisar’s so far cors-less daughter – Sonteine is due to be married the next day – and, to gain some favorable PR he is putting pressure on Xavier both to let Sonteine as her husband jump his queue (by cooking for their wedding feast) but also to take part in one of the fabled walkabouts – when the Macaenus walks around the island gathering ingredients and menu ideas.
The other two main characters who with Xavier and Sonteine are travelling across the Island this day (the author talks of four such) are Anise and Romanza.
Anise is our other thwarted lover – despite her healing touch cors she has herself suffered a series of miscarrriages and her unwillingness to try again she hears this day has driven her husband to take another lover now pregnant. She sets off to find out more but ends up in a brothel for the point at which the novel turns rather absurd (more later) while she turns her thoughts back to Xavier .
Romanza is Sonteine’s brother/Intisar’s black sheep son – with a male lover, a lie-detecting cors and living among the indigent (a group of descendants of the Island’s Carib-equivalents) who live an alternative and simpler life (for example with an obsession with mild doses of poison) on some outlying Islands. Xavier and he cross paths and initially Xavier is inspired by him (not realising who he is) to source his food from among the indigents.
This is only a fraction of the novels ideas which also include shape shifting houses, an imminent “sweet-hurricane”, passing sea creatures which act as stepping stones, a fruit infestation, a campaigning radio presenter, an eccentric beauty contest and the novel’s high (or depending on your view) low point: the “pum-pum” incident with the Island’s women all finding that a crucial body part has fallen out.
This starts with the potential to examine female sexuality, sex-work, male/female differences but it is as though the author does not really know what to do with the idea, other than simply returning to it (I was reminded of a standing joke in a sit-com), as Michael Donkor in the Guardian says “the absurd conceit is at first striking and provocative; it loses its comic charge because it is returned to over and again without engaging development or expansion” – and eventually the author just abandons the idea and moves on to her next invention.
And I think this is ultimately the issue with the book in a literary sense.
The book is intended to be in the magic-realism genre. Now of course the literary-fiction master of that genre also set his novels in a Caribbean coastal setting – Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But what makes his work particularly striking is that the magic elements are incongruous to the reader – not because of their magic but because of the otherwise mundane (in the sense of earthly) setting of the rest of the novel.
Here the author I think has failed to pull off (or perhaps to appreciate) the tension that is necessary between magic and realism.
To use a book-appropriate analogy – she I think lacks the magic-realism corrs. Unlike Xavier her own cooking touch is too heavy on adding the magic seasoning so obscuring the underlying flavours of the sociopolitical realism dish.
And as a fantasy novel I do not think it quite works either – one of the reasons that the fantasy genre is so obsessed with series of novels, beyond just genre-expectations, is that they rely on careful world building and then exploration of that world. And again I did not feel that the author here spent enough time ever exploring the world she had built rather than just adding yet another element to the world.
But I would emphasise again that this was nevertheless a very distinctive and fantastically-imagined novel, one that is as vibrant as its beautifully coloured page edgings and which at the end is an exploration of addiction and celebration of the greatest addiction of all - love.
April 26, 2021
Now this one is a strange book. We are following 4 protagonists who live on the island and sometimes cross paths. They also have different magical abilities, everyone on the island does.
So what happens next is 450 pages of wandering around, getting in some inconsequential situations, something weird happens and then the book ends. It was directionless and meandering.
And when I’m saying weird, this is just a scene not connected to anything in the novel:
In Pretty Town, a corpulent and very beautiful grandmother came in from a strangely heavy breeze to rest in her hammock. She barely stirred as a tiny mongoose crept through the folds of her labia and into her womb, where it found what smelled so good: a sugary, blood-enriched lining. The mongoose ate its fill, inadvertently killing the grandmother, and when the dead woman sat up and her soul crept out onto the bed sheet, the mongoose ate that, too.
Huh?...
And also a big event in the book was all women’s genitals and vaginas falling out from their bodies.
We are now in a position to put this to you: are you aware that approximately three hours ago, all adult Popisho females suffered a genital accident?’ ‘Wha-what – what –?’ ‘Their pum-pums fell off.’
Once again, huh?
Would I recommend it? If you love slow and plotless books where a lot of things don’t make sense, give it a try, why not.
The uniqueness other people mention, I appreciate it, although not maybe so random. But this book is definitely an experience.
So what happens next is 450 pages of wandering around, getting in some inconsequential situations, something weird happens and then the book ends. It was directionless and meandering.
And when I’m saying weird, this is just a scene not connected to anything in the novel:
In Pretty Town, a corpulent and very beautiful grandmother came in from a strangely heavy breeze to rest in her hammock. She barely stirred as a tiny mongoose crept through the folds of her labia and into her womb, where it found what smelled so good: a sugary, blood-enriched lining. The mongoose ate its fill, inadvertently killing the grandmother, and when the dead woman sat up and her soul crept out onto the bed sheet, the mongoose ate that, too.
Huh?...
And also a big event in the book was all women’s genitals and vaginas falling out from their bodies.
We are now in a position to put this to you: are you aware that approximately three hours ago, all adult Popisho females suffered a genital accident?’ ‘Wha-what – what –?’ ‘Their pum-pums fell off.’
Once again, huh?
Would I recommend it? If you love slow and plotless books where a lot of things don’t make sense, give it a try, why not.
The uniqueness other people mention, I appreciate it, although not maybe so random. But this book is definitely an experience.
Shelved as 'unfinished'
April 26, 2021(Published in the US as Popisho)
Unfortunately, I am going to have to call quits on this one at the 40% mark. I very rarely give up on a book partway through, but with more than 200 pages to go, it’s not doing anything for me. This particular breed of magical realism is usually something I really enjoy, but here the world building just had too much going on (kitchen sink-itis). The structure – alternating POVs, the action ostensibly taking place all on one day, but with extensive ‘back filling’ of character histories – slows the pace to a crawl, to the extent that I’m still waiting for things to get started (at 40% read).
I may pick this back up if I see any reviews that convince me it’s worth the time invested so far, but it’s going to one side for now.
Unfortunately, I am going to have to call quits on this one at the 40% mark. I very rarely give up on a book partway through, but with more than 200 pages to go, it’s not doing anything for me. This particular breed of magical realism is usually something I really enjoy, but here the world building just had too much going on (kitchen sink-itis). The structure – alternating POVs, the action ostensibly taking place all on one day, but with extensive ‘back filling’ of character histories – slows the pace to a crawl, to the extent that I’m still waiting for things to get started (at 40% read).
I may pick this back up if I see any reviews that convince me it’s worth the time invested so far, but it’s going to one side for now.
May 22, 2021
This novel introduces readers to the archipelago of Popisho, a fictional series of islands which form a nation of people possessed with magical qualities and real world concerns. The day begins with Xavier Redchoose being tasked with preparing a wedding feast for an influential man's daughter. His special ability is being able to season food just with the palms of his hands. This is a super power I never knew I needed but think about how convenient it would be! No more rooting through cluttered spice racks. But Xavier also possesses the title of macaenus, a coveted and specially appointed position in which he prepares a once in a lifetime meal for every person exactly when they need it. He's also haunted by his wife who died in the ocean and literally stalks the islands while her body gradually disintegrates. Wild enough for you? This is only the beginning of a fantastical journey infused with the awe-inspiring pleasure of dreams and the intensity of nightmares. At one point in the novel there's a magical burst which affects all the women on the island and their affliction is so shocking I couldn't believe what I was reading! I love that Ross has the courage to not only depict such a mischievous event but carry its logic through so we see how it results in chaotic transformation. This wondrous tale confidently leads the reader though the stories and lives of its vibrant characters to inspire, enchant and provoke thoughtful reflection.
Read my full review of This One Sky Day by Leone Ross on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of This One Sky Day by Leone Ross on LonesomeReader
April 6, 2021
Leone Ross's novel Popisho delighted me and tickled me and amused me throughout, but it didn't move me. That's all right. No novel can do everything. The imaginative force of this novel is powerful and captivating. Reading it was a pleasure akin to a very good meal, maybe even a meal cooked by the magically talented chef, Xavier Redchoose, the "macaenus" of his generation who is gifted with the talent to make a perfect meal for everyone. I loved the way Ross took time to engage every one of my senses as she told her tale. It's a lovely, lilting tumble of a story.
Read
December 8, 2020 What a truly unique and entertaining read! Leone Ross takes on an unforgettable journey!
In This One Sky Day we are taken to a fictional archipelago of Popisho. The Islanders are born with something called Cors. The Cors allows them special abilities like, being able to tell when someone is lying, extreme strength, speed, or the ability to cook food for someone’s individual taste. Yes, the Cors are endless and these Islanders are blessed with magic being all around them.
With the impending wedding of the Governor’s daughter Sonteine, the people of Popisho are in a somewhat festive mood. The Governor ordered a big feast to be made by Xavier Redchoose, the chosen macaenus, he is able to make the perfect meal for your individual taste. Xavier, is still grieving the death of his wife who drowned… or did she commit suicide or… did her kill her? It is hard to tell but the Islanders have their theories.
There is also wife who finds out her husband is cheating on her and spends the entire day looking into the claim. It is while at she is doing her detective work, at exactly 12 noon all the women of Popisho’s vagina fell out from underneath them. What continues next is entertaining, enchanting, and beautifully executed.
I have always stood by my claims that Leone Ross is a writer and she cements this claim with the publication of this book. I love how her mind works, and we get a look behind the curtain of her brilliant brain with this novel. There are moments when I am LAUGHING OUT LOUD and other times I am somber, you go through a range of emotions reading this beautifully written book.
I cannot wait for the World to read this! Thanks Faber Faber for send me this!
In This One Sky Day we are taken to a fictional archipelago of Popisho. The Islanders are born with something called Cors. The Cors allows them special abilities like, being able to tell when someone is lying, extreme strength, speed, or the ability to cook food for someone’s individual taste. Yes, the Cors are endless and these Islanders are blessed with magic being all around them.
With the impending wedding of the Governor’s daughter Sonteine, the people of Popisho are in a somewhat festive mood. The Governor ordered a big feast to be made by Xavier Redchoose, the chosen macaenus, he is able to make the perfect meal for your individual taste. Xavier, is still grieving the death of his wife who drowned… or did she commit suicide or… did her kill her? It is hard to tell but the Islanders have their theories.
There is also wife who finds out her husband is cheating on her and spends the entire day looking into the claim. It is while at she is doing her detective work, at exactly 12 noon all the women of Popisho’s vagina fell out from underneath them. What continues next is entertaining, enchanting, and beautifully executed.
I have always stood by my claims that Leone Ross is a writer and she cements this claim with the publication of this book. I love how her mind works, and we get a look behind the curtain of her brilliant brain with this novel. There are moments when I am LAUGHING OUT LOUD and other times I am somber, you go through a range of emotions reading this beautifully written book.
I cannot wait for the World to read this! Thanks Faber Faber for send me this!
April 1, 2022
Ok, now I know what a pum pum is...
May 4, 2021
Popisho is an extraordinary novel, and one of the most singular stories I've read in a long time.
It's hard to know where to begin with Popisho because it is a novel that is so utterly brimming with life. And if it's a novel defined by its vitality, then its characters are its lifeblood. There is no shortage of complex, empathetic, and human characters here. There are younger characters and older ones, brothers and sisters, parents and children, lovers and exes. They all come with their own personal histories and narrative voices, and you get to watch them develop beautifully over the course of the novel. Part of why Ross's characters work so well, I think, is because this novel is so polyphonic. Ross is able to masterfully embody the voices of her characters, whether they are major or minor, and even if they are just mentioned in passing and never heard from again. Her voices have real verve, a kind of energy and buoyancy that I so rarely encounter in the novels I read.
One of the most remarkable things about Popisho is also how vivid it is. Popisho as a setting is almost technicolour in its vividness. I distinctly remember reading one scene in this book and having to pause for a second because I was just so taken aback by how evocative the writing was, how palpable it made this world feel. Reading about the world of Popisho isn't reading about it so much as it is about being in it.
Frankly, I could go on and on about this novel: its humour, its empathy, its poignancy. It's just that good.
It's hard to know where to begin with Popisho because it is a novel that is so utterly brimming with life. And if it's a novel defined by its vitality, then its characters are its lifeblood. There is no shortage of complex, empathetic, and human characters here. There are younger characters and older ones, brothers and sisters, parents and children, lovers and exes. They all come with their own personal histories and narrative voices, and you get to watch them develop beautifully over the course of the novel. Part of why Ross's characters work so well, I think, is because this novel is so polyphonic. Ross is able to masterfully embody the voices of her characters, whether they are major or minor, and even if they are just mentioned in passing and never heard from again. Her voices have real verve, a kind of energy and buoyancy that I so rarely encounter in the novels I read.
One of the most remarkable things about Popisho is also how vivid it is. Popisho as a setting is almost technicolour in its vividness. I distinctly remember reading one scene in this book and having to pause for a second because I was just so taken aback by how evocative the writing was, how palpable it made this world feel. Reading about the world of Popisho isn't reading about it so much as it is about being in it.
Frankly, I could go on and on about this novel: its humour, its empathy, its poignancy. It's just that good.
April 11, 2021
This review is also available on my blog.
"Popisho was just too goddamned Popisho right about now."
Welcome to Popisho, where metaphor becomes real and the real becomes metaphor.
This One Sky Day is literary fiction at its absolute finest. We are introduced to the far, far away archipelago of Popisho, which seems to have a very Caribbean feel - although the word Caribbean is never mentioned, Ross preferring to preserve Popisho's mystery. The archipelago is populated by the offspring of, generations and generations ago, emancipated slaves and the indigenous population of Popisho. As much as Popisho is very deliberately isolated from the politics and various goings-on of the outside world (in fact, it could very much be a collection of islands in a mystical parallel world, like a tropical Avalon, if it were not for the very off-hand mention of Korea and Romania at around three-quarters in), this is important.
"This was the dead language of their ancestors, wrenched to life in these throats; lost, found and streaming out of their mouths and down their lips. Singing through the thickening air. In each face she could see terrible compassion and sorrow."
Through everything, Ross displays a fantastic undercurrent of humour of every shade imaginable: playful, witty, surreal, cutting, deadpan - and it works perfectly. She toes the line between comedy and tragedy, dancing through the shades of grey between and creating something that is so multifaceted, so complex, and so human.
Although Popisho has the makings of paradise, the author does not for one second allow us to think that human nature is any different here than anywhere else. But here's where this novel differs from so many of the misery-drenched, melancholia-worshipping literary fiction books - the corruption and tragedy never quite manages to eclipse the sheer atavistic wonder both these islands and of the human condition. Yes, humans can be selfish, greedy, and their arbitrary hatred for that which is different can anchor into society, into conventions, into their very souls. But Ross also reminds us of the flipside: of how people can find wonder in everything, of the never-faltering curiosity and awe of the human species, and how there's always people who strive to right wrongs - and they aren't always doomed to failure. Sometimes, they can prevail.
Sometimes, darkness doesn't win.
There's so much more I can say about this novel, but I won't, because a large part of the beauty of this novel is having the intricately imagined world of Popisho unfurl in front of your eyes as the author intended. But I will say this:
If this novel doesn't make it onto the Booker Prize longlist (at least), there's no justice in this world.
"Popisho was just too goddamned Popisho right about now."
Welcome to Popisho, where metaphor becomes real and the real becomes metaphor.
This One Sky Day is literary fiction at its absolute finest. We are introduced to the far, far away archipelago of Popisho, which seems to have a very Caribbean feel - although the word Caribbean is never mentioned, Ross preferring to preserve Popisho's mystery. The archipelago is populated by the offspring of, generations and generations ago, emancipated slaves and the indigenous population of Popisho. As much as Popisho is very deliberately isolated from the politics and various goings-on of the outside world (in fact, it could very much be a collection of islands in a mystical parallel world, like a tropical Avalon, if it were not for the very off-hand mention of Korea and Romania at around three-quarters in), this is important.
"This was the dead language of their ancestors, wrenched to life in these throats; lost, found and streaming out of their mouths and down their lips. Singing through the thickening air. In each face she could see terrible compassion and sorrow."
Through everything, Ross displays a fantastic undercurrent of humour of every shade imaginable: playful, witty, surreal, cutting, deadpan - and it works perfectly. She toes the line between comedy and tragedy, dancing through the shades of grey between and creating something that is so multifaceted, so complex, and so human.
Although Popisho has the makings of paradise, the author does not for one second allow us to think that human nature is any different here than anywhere else. But here's where this novel differs from so many of the misery-drenched, melancholia-worshipping literary fiction books - the corruption and tragedy never quite manages to eclipse the sheer atavistic wonder both these islands and of the human condition. Yes, humans can be selfish, greedy, and their arbitrary hatred for that which is different can anchor into society, into conventions, into their very souls. But Ross also reminds us of the flipside: of how people can find wonder in everything, of the never-faltering curiosity and awe of the human species, and how there's always people who strive to right wrongs - and they aren't always doomed to failure. Sometimes, they can prevail.
Sometimes, darkness doesn't win.
There's so much more I can say about this novel, but I won't, because a large part of the beauty of this novel is having the intricately imagined world of Popisho unfurl in front of your eyes as the author intended. But I will say this:
If this novel doesn't make it onto the Booker Prize longlist (at least), there's no justice in this world.
September 10, 2024
this book will test your love for magical realism. it is magical realism on speed. but I couldn't help but be impressed by how well everything came together and how ambitious the storytelling was. 60% of this book is about all the women on the islands vaginas falling off LITERALLY. its unique, ridiculous, smart, bold, and decisive
April 24, 2021
Dis a di book you read when you live a farin and u miss u yaad. This story is forever locked in mind and heart because it was infused with the spirit of my island home.
The dialogue is sharp, fluid, lyrical, rhythmic, vibrant, and vibrates with the spirit of a culture and people that we are intimately linked to.
The prose is heady with meaning, reaches out to steep the reader in emotion, place, and space; the characters feel known and the smells of the world are rich.
The characters are central to the themes, setting, and world that Ross creates. They are our sisters, brothers, friends, and neighbours; all infused with a magic that is heavily influenced by our culture.
The diligence imparted in creating this story is palpable and every emotion is engaged while reading. It is impossible not to acknowledge the beauty found within these pages, the heart and empathy, the love, loss, and pain; how each serve their immense purpose of combining to culminate in true storytelling prowess.
Each page takes us from strength to strength and leaves us in awe of Ross' ability to weave a tale so unique yet marked indelibly with her heritage, her Caribbean, paying homage to the breadth of imagination that most assuredly is gifted from the ancestors.
Every once in a blue moon a book comes along with a story on its pages that drips pure concentrated sugar, sugar that is so sweet it hurts, so sumptuous and sensual, so bawdy and real, so mystical and magical. This One Sky Day is that book. A story of people that could fall from our grandmother's lips. There's no greater praise we could give a book.
The dialogue is sharp, fluid, lyrical, rhythmic, vibrant, and vibrates with the spirit of a culture and people that we are intimately linked to.
The prose is heady with meaning, reaches out to steep the reader in emotion, place, and space; the characters feel known and the smells of the world are rich.
The characters are central to the themes, setting, and world that Ross creates. They are our sisters, brothers, friends, and neighbours; all infused with a magic that is heavily influenced by our culture.
The diligence imparted in creating this story is palpable and every emotion is engaged while reading. It is impossible not to acknowledge the beauty found within these pages, the heart and empathy, the love, loss, and pain; how each serve their immense purpose of combining to culminate in true storytelling prowess.
Each page takes us from strength to strength and leaves us in awe of Ross' ability to weave a tale so unique yet marked indelibly with her heritage, her Caribbean, paying homage to the breadth of imagination that most assuredly is gifted from the ancestors.
Every once in a blue moon a book comes along with a story on its pages that drips pure concentrated sugar, sugar that is so sweet it hurts, so sumptuous and sensual, so bawdy and real, so mystical and magical. This One Sky Day is that book. A story of people that could fall from our grandmother's lips. There's no greater praise we could give a book.
June 5, 2022
3/5 stars
The short summary is this: I loved the world of Popisho and would've happily read 400+ pages of lore on the island and its culture. Unfortunately, I failed to connect to the characters and their storylines overall, due to some of the narrative choices the author makes in the way in which she tells the story.
The world of Popisho is filled to the brim with vibrant, interesting and engaging concepts and ideas, yet most of them felt visited rather than explored. The characters, in spite of their unique cors, felt surface-level and strangely forgetable, and their stories bring to mind the phrase "wide as a (very, véry meandering) river, but deep as a puddle".
Although I think I'd still recommend this book to a certain type of reader, I have to say it was a big disappointment for me personally. If you're a fan of bizarre and colourful magical realism set in a world that's frankly a little cooky, this one might be for you. Personally I'd have prefered a smaller scope (focussing on characters), or an even more zoomed-out-one (e.g. short stories on Popisho lore, without any of the protagonists).
The short summary is this: I loved the world of Popisho and would've happily read 400+ pages of lore on the island and its culture. Unfortunately, I failed to connect to the characters and their storylines overall, due to some of the narrative choices the author makes in the way in which she tells the story.
The world of Popisho is filled to the brim with vibrant, interesting and engaging concepts and ideas, yet most of them felt visited rather than explored. The characters, in spite of their unique cors, felt surface-level and strangely forgetable, and their stories bring to mind the phrase "wide as a (very, véry meandering) river, but deep as a puddle".
Although I think I'd still recommend this book to a certain type of reader, I have to say it was a big disappointment for me personally. If you're a fan of bizarre and colourful magical realism set in a world that's frankly a little cooky, this one might be for you. Personally I'd have prefered a smaller scope (focussing on characters), or an even more zoomed-out-one (e.g. short stories on Popisho lore, without any of the protagonists).
October 20, 2021
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2021
This is a book I would have been very unlikely to read had it not been on the Goldsmiths list, and having read it I remain a little baffled by how it qualifies as innovative. So I may be a little harsher on it relative to the rest of that very strong list than I might have been had I read it purely for pleasure.
On its own terms, the book is rather brilliant - a magic realist fantasy set in Popisho, an imaginary Caribbean state very loosely based in Jamaica in which magical events occur routinely. The cast is kaleidoscopic, and the plot revolves around Xavier, a sort of official state chef known as the macaenus, and Anise, whose marriage is in trouble after a string of failed pregnancies. The writing is lush and exuberant, and Ross clearly has a very fertile imagination, and a in most magic realist novels there are also political undercurrents at play.
This is a book I would have been very unlikely to read had it not been on the Goldsmiths list, and having read it I remain a little baffled by how it qualifies as innovative. So I may be a little harsher on it relative to the rest of that very strong list than I might have been had I read it purely for pleasure.
On its own terms, the book is rather brilliant - a magic realist fantasy set in Popisho, an imaginary Caribbean state very loosely based in Jamaica in which magical events occur routinely. The cast is kaleidoscopic, and the plot revolves around Xavier, a sort of official state chef known as the macaenus, and Anise, whose marriage is in trouble after a string of failed pregnancies. The writing is lush and exuberant, and Ross clearly has a very fertile imagination, and a in most magic realist novels there are also political undercurrents at play.
February 3, 2022
Indescribably wacky, by spiral-eyed turns postcolonially utopic in Leone Ross’ Caribbean-flavoured fantasy of an archipelago of rambunctious Popisho, unblinkingly sexual as on This One Sky Day vaginas (here called “pum-pums”) take unexplained leave of their owners, and magical to such a hyperspecific degree the powers (here “cors”) feel almost mundane, all of which audacious imagination far exceeding the point of probably causing a massive enough writer’s block for me that I took an unexpected hiatus from posting further reviews here or anywhere else almost as a singular result. How do you even follow that? Other, less dramatic reasons being: surviving Christmas retail season, wading through Yanagihara’s latest, moving house, general burnout, etc. Yet my creative slump, with its timing, may well attest favourably to Ross’ oh-so-bountiful counterpoint, i.e., with the unfurling of her butterfly-winged imagination so impossibly weird/provocative/hilarious/beautiful in its multicoloured dazzlement that anything I write about it’s bound to fall short of minimal coherence, that the only thing I might do to entice you to read it is waving if not throwing it at your face, breath bated pending your reactions. This is the kind of book you give to someone less as a thoughtful gift than a social experiment, as the ultimate test of your relationship via trial by sheer absurdity. Toeing the line between bafflingly brilliant and brilliantly baffling, it’s hard to even know which, this novel demands saintly patience not so much for Ross’ writing, already impressive in that freewheeling-through-skies, devil-may-care feel her deceptively easy words have, as for the apparent narrative chaos herein contoured, evoking Evaristo and James even as Ross acknowledges them in the final pages as fellow “comrades in this word-struggle,” her story being a sustained enchantment brimming over with actual okay-this-is-happening surreal wonder borne of ghosts and grieving cooks, secret lovers and radio announcers, politicians and prostitutes, somehow eventuating amid all these island shenanigans in a pretty cogent critique of race, class, and capitalism, with plenty thematic helpings of queerness and revolution.
August 18, 2021
“Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something-something, boy, a little something extra. The local name was cors. Magic, but more than magic.” - This One Sky Day by Leone Ross
I have been very remiss in my duty to make everyone in this universe read this beautiful magical gem of a book. So here are some reasons to tempt you into picking it up :
* You get a ticket to Popisho. A land of whimsical beauty, where sky meets the sea and the very air is filled with magic.
* Multiple characters written with such finesse that you feel like you have known them all your life
* Relationships explored so deeply and with so much raw emotion that it touches your soul.
* The Carribean culture and traditions gets shown in all its splendour and it’s unique essence pours out with each lovingly crafted sentence.
* Heavy themes of racism, homophobia, patriarchy, abuse are all adeptly handled with the utmost sensitivity.
* Writing so lyrical, so sensual, so poignantly beautiful and magical that I have underlined literally every other sentence in this book.
* Magical realism at its finest!!!
This book is so criminally underrated ! I laughed, I cried and I felt soooo many emotions as I was reading this book. This is truly a masterpiece.
Just trust me and pick up this book asap. I guarantee you will love it!!!
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30/06/21 - How do I even review this book. My heart is soo full, the book is full of annotations and I want to just jump on a plane and go live in Popisho for the rest of my life with Xavier and Anise and Zaza and Sonte and little Chse and Olivianna and Io and Hah and …. I love it soo much, what do I do with the rest of my life 😭😭
I have been very remiss in my duty to make everyone in this universe read this beautiful magical gem of a book. So here are some reasons to tempt you into picking it up :
* You get a ticket to Popisho. A land of whimsical beauty, where sky meets the sea and the very air is filled with magic.
* Multiple characters written with such finesse that you feel like you have known them all your life
* Relationships explored so deeply and with so much raw emotion that it touches your soul.
* The Carribean culture and traditions gets shown in all its splendour and it’s unique essence pours out with each lovingly crafted sentence.
* Heavy themes of racism, homophobia, patriarchy, abuse are all adeptly handled with the utmost sensitivity.
* Writing so lyrical, so sensual, so poignantly beautiful and magical that I have underlined literally every other sentence in this book.
* Magical realism at its finest!!!
This book is so criminally underrated ! I laughed, I cried and I felt soooo many emotions as I was reading this book. This is truly a masterpiece.
Just trust me and pick up this book asap. I guarantee you will love it!!!
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30/06/21 - How do I even review this book. My heart is soo full, the book is full of annotations and I want to just jump on a plane and go live in Popisho for the rest of my life with Xavier and Anise and Zaza and Sonte and little Chse and Olivianna and Io and Hah and …. I love it soo much, what do I do with the rest of my life 😭😭
May 21, 2021
A Celebration of Words, Bodies, Living, Women, Men.
Leone Ross with her magic reality grabs our realities, our regrets, sorrows, griefs, loving, choices and takes a deep look at them. While she infuses them with her fantastical words, they remain our reality. How different persons see the same person differently, how they love or not love that same person differently. Zeb's view of Nya was so lovingly written, such a poignant moment.
Ross continues giving us contrasts throughout the story, men - women, enslaved - indigent, right - wrong. She also examines different gifts, blessings we are given and by putting a light on them she values what we might in our busy world discard.
All in all I loved the strength and joy she painted with her words and I'd love to taste more.
An ARC gently given by author/publishers via Netgalley.
Leone Ross with her magic reality grabs our realities, our regrets, sorrows, griefs, loving, choices and takes a deep look at them. While she infuses them with her fantastical words, they remain our reality. How different persons see the same person differently, how they love or not love that same person differently. Zeb's view of Nya was so lovingly written, such a poignant moment.
Ross continues giving us contrasts throughout the story, men - women, enslaved - indigent, right - wrong. She also examines different gifts, blessings we are given and by putting a light on them she values what we might in our busy world discard.
All in all I loved the strength and joy she painted with her words and I'd love to taste more.
An ARC gently given by author/publishers via Netgalley.
Want to read
October 18, 2021DNF about 50 pages in. Luscious sentences that go nowhere, slowly, and just didn't engage this reader.
June 15, 2022
I'm sad to say that I didn't love this book as much as I thought I would. Although This One Sky Day has a lot of speculative and fantastical elements to the world building, this is very much a literary novel.
And while I can love a great literary novel, it was a struggle at times for me to get through this book. The opening was strong for me. I loved learning more about the island and meeting the different POV characters. I loved some of the themes like identity and grief and dissecting the patriarchy.
But then there was just too much going on, POVs and storylines jumping around, and every time I wanted to sink in and stay with a character and dig into their situation, we'd be jumping onto something else.
The story was highly creative and inventive. In fact, it became a little too inventive at times! I understand what the author was trying to do. I don't think she solely set out to shock readers, but the themes and ideas became a little muddled along the way for me.
The writing style was also tricky. At times it was very stream of conscious which added to the feeling of me feeling unsettled and wanting something more substantial to latch onto for more than one minute.
I'd love to read something else by Leone Ross in the future, but unfortunately this one will not be a favorite.
And while I can love a great literary novel, it was a struggle at times for me to get through this book. The opening was strong for me. I loved learning more about the island and meeting the different POV characters. I loved some of the themes like identity and grief and dissecting the patriarchy.
But then there was just too much going on, POVs and storylines jumping around, and every time I wanted to sink in and stay with a character and dig into their situation, we'd be jumping onto something else.
The story was highly creative and inventive. In fact, it became a little too inventive at times! I understand what the author was trying to do. I don't think she solely set out to shock readers, but the themes and ideas became a little muddled along the way for me.
The writing style was also tricky. At times it was very stream of conscious which added to the feeling of me feeling unsettled and wanting something more substantial to latch onto for more than one minute.
I'd love to read something else by Leone Ross in the future, but unfortunately this one will not be a favorite.
March 27, 2021
Once in a while, I will come across a book that makes me reevaluate pretty much everything else I have read in the past. It makes me think, "Wow, how dare I rate X-book as five stars, when it pales in comparison to this?" I had that feeling once or twice in the past and I had it again not when I finished "Popisho" ("This One Sky Day" in the UK) but from the very first pages, when I was immediately swept into a world where ghosts come back to settle their scores, where trees dispense not fruit but fragments of poetry, and where people get drunk on butterflies just as easily as rum.
The thing with "Popisho" is that I could easily compare it to powerhouses of literary fantasies and (I know, I know this is a very loaded term) magical realism. In fact, this is perhaps the only book that deserves the comparison to "One Hundred Years of Solitude"; it is also the only book that has ever managed to recreate the almost transcendent atmosphere of Garcia Marquez's masterpiece. You know that sensation that yes, this world Ross has described is magical and thus unattainable beyond the realm of fiction, but something about the characters and the story also fills you with the certainty that if you only know where to go and where to look, you will manage to find it somewhere.
Still, while that comparison might be technically accurate, it feels if not unfair, in that I think all comparisons tend to have the potential of diluting the lesser known author's achievement. And what an achievement this is! A powerful love story that takes you by surprise, because it is not about romance, or at least not only. It's about community building, friendship, our relationship to the natural world, it is also a subtle and tongue-in-cheek critique of power and gender and colonialism, delivered with such panache that I alternated between laughing and crying. Ross's writing is poetic and like her story, steeped in Jamaican English and Caribbean folklore.
It's just... this is a fantastic story, with a cast of characters you grow to love and ache for, told by a master stylist that made me fall in love with reading all over again. What can I say, I am a sucker for a story about star-crossed lovers!
The thing with "Popisho" is that I could easily compare it to powerhouses of literary fantasies and (I know, I know this is a very loaded term) magical realism. In fact, this is perhaps the only book that deserves the comparison to "One Hundred Years of Solitude"; it is also the only book that has ever managed to recreate the almost transcendent atmosphere of Garcia Marquez's masterpiece. You know that sensation that yes, this world Ross has described is magical and thus unattainable beyond the realm of fiction, but something about the characters and the story also fills you with the certainty that if you only know where to go and where to look, you will manage to find it somewhere.
Still, while that comparison might be technically accurate, it feels if not unfair, in that I think all comparisons tend to have the potential of diluting the lesser known author's achievement. And what an achievement this is! A powerful love story that takes you by surprise, because it is not about romance, or at least not only. It's about community building, friendship, our relationship to the natural world, it is also a subtle and tongue-in-cheek critique of power and gender and colonialism, delivered with such panache that I alternated between laughing and crying. Ross's writing is poetic and like her story, steeped in Jamaican English and Caribbean folklore.
It's just... this is a fantastic story, with a cast of characters you grow to love and ache for, told by a master stylist that made me fall in love with reading all over again. What can I say, I am a sucker for a story about star-crossed lovers!
August 27, 2022
Fantasy set on the fictional island of Popisho in the Caribbean, where each inhabitant has a different magical quality. The main characters marry the wrong partners. It is part love story and part social commentary told in a magical realist style. It takes place in a single day, with flashbacks. It is structured around multiple points of view. It reads like a fable.
There are interesting ideas in this book, but none is fully developed or explored. A topic is introduced, then briefly commented upon before moving to the next, making it feel extremely disjointed. The story is told in a long and meandering manner. The world is not explained in enough detail. There is no balance between the magic and the realist elements. Regular readers of fantasy may enjoy this more than I did.
There are interesting ideas in this book, but none is fully developed or explored. A topic is introduced, then briefly commented upon before moving to the next, making it feel extremely disjointed. The story is told in a long and meandering manner. The world is not explained in enough detail. There is no balance between the magic and the realist elements. Regular readers of fantasy may enjoy this more than I did.
Read
June 29, 2021I read about 70 pages before DNF'ing. Another case of it's not the book it's me. The fable-like style of the writing didn't work for me. Maybe if it was a shorter book I'd have pressed on. But it's a book that deserves to be loved, I'm glad it's getting such a positive reception from others.
February 14, 2024
Island-bound community love, from purely sensual to culinary, and rooted in the oceanic-natural environs. And magically wacky island times!
I appreciate the overall message:
Greater freedom and equity comes with community unity.
And notes in the acknowledgements include many authors!
"To comrades in this word-struggle", at the back with is not to be missed! "Bernadine Evaristo, Kei Miller, Musa Okwanga, Niven Govinden, Vicky Arana, Kadija George, Dorothea Smartt, Nicholas Royle, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Melanie Abrahams & all the Renaissance One crew, Sunny Singh, Rob Shearman, Michael Hughes, Marlon James, Sarah Sanders, Sharmilla Beezmohun, Irenosen Okojie, Catherine Johnson, Naomi Woddis, Monique Roffey, Maggie Gee, Courrtia Newland, Joy Francis, the Spread The Wod staff, and Inua Ellams."
An unusually magical tale with emphasis on the characters' inner thoughts, especially sensual and sensory. The sense of place is quite vivid, set on a fictional island. A fun experience with the audio being read by the author and her Jamaican accent.
Chapter 12, hysterical hysteria?!
From Washington Post reviewer Wendy Smith:
"Ross writes throughout with such juice and verve that she can be forgiven for her novel’s occasional cloudiness and excesses. “Popisho” will please and excite anyone who appreciates literary ambition and risk-taking."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
Kirkus Reviews: "Ross, who lives in England and was raised in Jamaica, wheels kaleidoscopically through different points of view and backward and forward in time, offering readers a cross section of her invented country: its politics, religion, economy, food. Her novel carves out a place in the canon of memorable works of magical realism, but it's also totally itself, "
I appreciate the overall message:
Greater freedom and equity comes with community unity.
And notes in the acknowledgements include many authors!
"To comrades in this word-struggle", at the back with is not to be missed! "Bernadine Evaristo, Kei Miller, Musa Okwanga, Niven Govinden, Vicky Arana, Kadija George, Dorothea Smartt, Nicholas Royle, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Melanie Abrahams & all the Renaissance One crew, Sunny Singh, Rob Shearman, Michael Hughes, Marlon James, Sarah Sanders, Sharmilla Beezmohun, Irenosen Okojie, Catherine Johnson, Naomi Woddis, Monique Roffey, Maggie Gee, Courrtia Newland, Joy Francis, the Spread The Wod staff, and Inua Ellams."
An unusually magical tale with emphasis on the characters' inner thoughts, especially sensual and sensory. The sense of place is quite vivid, set on a fictional island. A fun experience with the audio being read by the author and her Jamaican accent.
Chapter 12, hysterical hysteria?!
From Washington Post reviewer Wendy Smith:
"Ross writes throughout with such juice and verve that she can be forgiven for her novel’s occasional cloudiness and excesses. “Popisho” will please and excite anyone who appreciates literary ambition and risk-taking."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
Kirkus Reviews: "Ross, who lives in England and was raised in Jamaica, wheels kaleidoscopically through different points of view and backward and forward in time, offering readers a cross section of her invented country: its politics, religion, economy, food. Her novel carves out a place in the canon of memorable works of magical realism, but it's also totally itself, "
April 24, 2021
The dialogue is sharp, fluid, lyrical, rhythmic, vibrant, and vibrates with the spirit of a culture and people that we are intimately linked to.
The prose is heady with meaning, reaches out to steep the reader in emotion, place, and space; the characters feel known and the smells of the world are rich.
The characters are central to the themes, setting, and world that Ross creates. They are our sisters, brothers, friends, and neighbours; all infused with a magic that is heavily influenced by our culture.
The diligence imparted in creating this story is palpable and every emotion is engaged while reading. It is impossible not to acknowledge the beauty found within these pages, the heart and empathy, the love, loss, and pain; how each serve their immense purpose of combining to culminate in true storytelling prowess.
Each page takes us from strength to strength and leaves us in awe of Ross' ability to weave a tale so unique yet marked indelibly with her heritage, her Caribbean, paying homage to the breadth of imagination that most assuredly is gifted from the ancestors.
Every once in a blue moon a book comes along with a story on its pages that drips pure concentrated sugar, sugar that is so sweet it hurts, so sumptuous and sensual, so bawdy and real, so mystical and magical. This One Sky Day is that book. A story of people that could fall from our grandmother's lips. There's no greater praise we could give a book.
The prose is heady with meaning, reaches out to steep the reader in emotion, place, and space; the characters feel known and the smells of the world are rich.
The characters are central to the themes, setting, and world that Ross creates. They are our sisters, brothers, friends, and neighbours; all infused with a magic that is heavily influenced by our culture.
The diligence imparted in creating this story is palpable and every emotion is engaged while reading. It is impossible not to acknowledge the beauty found within these pages, the heart and empathy, the love, loss, and pain; how each serve their immense purpose of combining to culminate in true storytelling prowess.
Each page takes us from strength to strength and leaves us in awe of Ross' ability to weave a tale so unique yet marked indelibly with her heritage, her Caribbean, paying homage to the breadth of imagination that most assuredly is gifted from the ancestors.
Every once in a blue moon a book comes along with a story on its pages that drips pure concentrated sugar, sugar that is so sweet it hurts, so sumptuous and sensual, so bawdy and real, so mystical and magical. This One Sky Day is that book. A story of people that could fall from our grandmother's lips. There's no greater praise we could give a book.
Shelved as 'dnf'
October 9, 2021I wasn't really planning to read this book until it was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. For the last few years, I have always read all of the Goldsmiths Prize*.
But not this year. I got to 48% and I'm going to put it to one side. If someone can persuade me it is worth picking up again, I'll go back to it, but it really isn't working for me. If I am honest, I'm simply bored. I could dress that up with comments about the slow pace with all the flashbacks or about the magical realism that seems to have forgotten about the realism part. And I could comment on how strange it is that a book so busy with ideas could bore anyone. But, the fact is that I am not enjoying it.
*Oops - honesty compels me to admit I skipped Will Self's Phone.
But not this year. I got to 48% and I'm going to put it to one side. If someone can persuade me it is worth picking up again, I'll go back to it, but it really isn't working for me. If I am honest, I'm simply bored. I could dress that up with comments about the slow pace with all the flashbacks or about the magical realism that seems to have forgotten about the realism part. And I could comment on how strange it is that a book so busy with ideas could bore anyone. But, the fact is that I am not enjoying it.
*Oops - honesty compels me to admit I skipped Will Self's Phone.
October 29, 2021
Shortlisted 2021 Goldsmiths Prize.
4.5/5
Ross' The One Sky Day is a quite spectacular magical realist novel. Gorgeous prose as you generally expect from such works. The book follows two central characters over a day on the archipelego of Popisho, a Caribbean inspired setting. Xavier has the magical (cors) power of flavoring food with his hands and is the Island's highly regarded, celebrity cook (a Macaenus); Anise can diagnose illness simply through touch. Many of the Island's inhabitants have such Cors magical gifts.
Over the course of this day, Xavier travels around the Island encountering different inhabitants and in the process recounting many key episodes in his life and also in others close to him as he collects ingredients for a Wedding feast. We also get to enjoy a quite moving tale of star-crossed love.
The highlight for me is the beautifully textured prose as Ross builds layer by layer a sense of corporeal and even spiritual immersion in this place and its characters. The book is brimming, overflowing with shapes, sounds, emotions, colours, aromas, tastes, landscapes. It's a feast, a smorgasbord of magical realism. There's morphing houses and moths that are consumed for their drug like and addictive qualities. For some it may be too much, overloaded even, with the tropes and imagery of the fantastic. But for me pulling it all together as I generally expect from quality magical realism is a deeply thoughtful concern with matters sociopolitical. This One Sky Day is threaded with themes of sexual identity, gender, political corruption and global power inequalities. These do not feel just chucked in as an additional ingredient to the magical realist soup. They are integral and cohere.
This One Sky Day is one hell of a tasty dose of magical realism with absurdist tones and among my favourite reads of the year. Highly recommended. Oh and although coming in at over 400 pages (so some heft to it), it held me mostly entranced throughout. The magical crafty prose on full display here has a distinctive, 'mothy', addictive flavour.
Disclaimer: I personally love novels dripping with the fantastic, including fantasy genre fiction, so I'm somewhat in my element with this one and may therefore be giving it a pass on some flaws.
4.5/5
Ross' The One Sky Day is a quite spectacular magical realist novel. Gorgeous prose as you generally expect from such works. The book follows two central characters over a day on the archipelego of Popisho, a Caribbean inspired setting. Xavier has the magical (cors) power of flavoring food with his hands and is the Island's highly regarded, celebrity cook (a Macaenus); Anise can diagnose illness simply through touch. Many of the Island's inhabitants have such Cors magical gifts.
Over the course of this day, Xavier travels around the Island encountering different inhabitants and in the process recounting many key episodes in his life and also in others close to him as he collects ingredients for a Wedding feast. We also get to enjoy a quite moving tale of star-crossed love.
The highlight for me is the beautifully textured prose as Ross builds layer by layer a sense of corporeal and even spiritual immersion in this place and its characters. The book is brimming, overflowing with shapes, sounds, emotions, colours, aromas, tastes, landscapes. It's a feast, a smorgasbord of magical realism. There's morphing houses and moths that are consumed for their drug like and addictive qualities. For some it may be too much, overloaded even, with the tropes and imagery of the fantastic. But for me pulling it all together as I generally expect from quality magical realism is a deeply thoughtful concern with matters sociopolitical. This One Sky Day is threaded with themes of sexual identity, gender, political corruption and global power inequalities. These do not feel just chucked in as an additional ingredient to the magical realist soup. They are integral and cohere.
This One Sky Day is one hell of a tasty dose of magical realism with absurdist tones and among my favourite reads of the year. Highly recommended. Oh and although coming in at over 400 pages (so some heft to it), it held me mostly entranced throughout. The magical crafty prose on full display here has a distinctive, 'mothy', addictive flavour.
Disclaimer: I personally love novels dripping with the fantastic, including fantasy genre fiction, so I'm somewhat in my element with this one and may therefore be giving it a pass on some flaws.
July 6, 2021
In a state of depression after the death of his wife, chef Xavier seeks solace in hard drugs, while on another of the Dead Islands, a former lover of his is also almost at a state of despair, having had several miscarriages, and her husband is away with other women.
Straight forward enough, well not really.
Though it takes sometime into the novel until they emerge, indications of magic materialise; it has after all been promised from the outset..
Xavier is the town’s macaenus, his gift is to be able to cook meals that nourish an individual’s particular needs. His vice has transitioned from the relatively harmless butterfly to consuming giant moths, which are more like heroin.
This is a very different and highly entertaining novel, though I couldn’t help but feel Ross got a bit carried away at times. The cast of characters, and their various cors is huge, too many to keep track of. The best humour is short and crisp, and as with Gilliam’s writing for Python, there’s nothing wrong with things becoming absurd, at least for a while. But the sequence involving the ‘pum-pum’ of every Popisho woman falling out, for no apparent reason, is laboured and overdone (probably occupying, on and off, about a quarter of the novel).
I expect this will be a much discussed and even award winning novel though, the reason being it’s unique style of story-telling, and the smart way some of society’s key issues are handled, notably prejudice and the power of the people in exposing corruption and wrongdoing.
There is tremendous ambition here, which combined with its vigour and strong flavour, makes it great fun to read.
Straight forward enough, well not really.
Though it takes sometime into the novel until they emerge, indications of magic materialise; it has after all been promised from the outset..
Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something-something, boy, a little something extra. The local name was cors. Magic, but more than magic. A gift, nah.
Xavier is the town’s macaenus, his gift is to be able to cook meals that nourish an individual’s particular needs. His vice has transitioned from the relatively harmless butterfly to consuming giant moths, which are more like heroin.
This is a very different and highly entertaining novel, though I couldn’t help but feel Ross got a bit carried away at times. The cast of characters, and their various cors is huge, too many to keep track of. The best humour is short and crisp, and as with Gilliam’s writing for Python, there’s nothing wrong with things becoming absurd, at least for a while. But the sequence involving the ‘pum-pum’ of every Popisho woman falling out, for no apparent reason, is laboured and overdone (probably occupying, on and off, about a quarter of the novel).
I expect this will be a much discussed and even award winning novel though, the reason being it’s unique style of story-telling, and the smart way some of society’s key issues are handled, notably prejudice and the power of the people in exposing corruption and wrongdoing.
There is tremendous ambition here, which combined with its vigour and strong flavour, makes it great fun to read.
July 21, 2021
[3.5] This novel is fireworks in all colors. Sadly, the show goes on for a little too long at 464 pages and the story does not keep me altogether engaged. The major turn of events – the “pum-pum” incident ��� is a great idea, but the novel, in my view, holds few other elements of equal interest with regard to plot or writing that would merit its length. It is still, however, a feat of imagination and will surely appeal to readers more willing to lose themselves in the fantastic. Like Michael Donkor writes in his review for the Guardian: “This is a novel that will reward those who are able to surrender to its capaciousness and eccentricities, to revel in its oddness and delight in each surprise.”
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