Modern novelists seem to fall into two camps: those who can write vivid descriptive prose and those who can tell a good story. In the latter camp are best-selling writers like Michael Crichton and John Grisham. In the former are critically acclaimed writers like Arundhati Roy and Lawrence Scott. Mario Vargas Llosa, Stephen King and Toni Morrison are among the few exceptions who can do both.
Oonya Kempadoo, whose first book Buxton Spice has been receiving considerable attention in literary circles, falls squarely into the lyrical prose group. Buxton Spice is not so much a novel as a series of vivid vignettes about life in a small Guyanese village during the Burnham regime. The book has no plot and only the sparest narrative structure. But Kempadoo commands attention simply by her extraordinary descriptive gifts. Her prose is very sensuous - full of sight, sound, smell and taste. She also has an accurate ear for dialogue and a keen eye for the foibles of ordinary people. Her description of a domestic fight, for example, is the best I have ever read - full of the ignorance (in the Trini sense) that such incidents always have and which most authors do not capture.
"Hell knew was thunder in that house tonight. As soon as she hit the gate, the cusses rang out bout 'Ricardo and f---ing whoas'...Grabbing the mortar pestle in one hand and holding her head in the other, she was flying through the gate and over the road before the could stop her. Wailing and shrieking, lashing the side of the shop with the heavy pestle. The racket she raised reached every house around."
Only the character portrayals lack the same distinctiveness, though Kempadoo's descriptive powers make them vivid enough. And the novel's protagonist, a 10-year-old girl, is a clear and lucid voice. Here is how she sums up dinner talk at the family table: "Sometimes, when everybody was talking, I played ping-pong with my eyes - seeing if I could keep up with the flying words. Big big townschool words from them big sisters. Some garbled-up ones from Yan's big mouth. Little short ones from Saskia. Curly quick ones from Sammy. Just kept batting them up and down the long table to the next player."
But, contrary to what you may have been led to believe by the publisher's publicity, the sex isn't such a big deal in the book. At least, not to me; but, then, I am neither a prude nor British. The novel's perspective is summed up in the following description of a young woman: "She had that same big, gangly but thickset way of walking and bouncing her bubbies. The bouncing said to everybody, 'I like sex. So what?' But not in a hoity-toity way.")
Where the book falls short is in the superficiality of idea and theme behind the admittedly wonderful prose. The references to the Guyana situation and the satirical portrait of Burnham (who has now been stamped for life in death by this novel) are only tangentially connected to the substance of the book. Nonetheless, it is probable that Buxton Spice will join a very short list of West Indian classics. And it is quite certain that Oonya Kempadoo, if she has more books in her, will be one of the true defining voices of Caribbean literature in the coming century.
Copyright ©1998, Kevin Baldeosingh