Book Review: Here Comes the Sun

 Here Comes the Sun, by Nicole Dennis-Benn

    Poverty and despair, combined wth judgmental Christianity, do not bode well for a society.

    Especially when it is comprised of people of color whose ancestors were enslaved by the European colonizers who already had killed off the indigenous population. After a few hundred years of this treatment, they live on a Caribbean island where catering to weathy tourists is their major source of income.

    Thus, we see a society -- at least the one portrayed in this novel, written by a Jamaican woman -- where the exploitation of others seems to be the norm. Striving to be something other than what you are runs a close second.

    It's not a happy novel about reggae music and lolling in the sun smoking weed. Instead, it depicts people struggling against themselves, their families, and their heritage, to achieve what they have been taught they need -- and discovering they have to exploit and betray not ony their loved ones, but their very souls.

    This is Dennis-Benn's first novel, written in 2016, and it's a good one. The writing is superb, rich in language and history. Many characters speak in Jamaican Patois -- except when they need to impress someone richer or whiter than they are -- and while it's sometimes difficult for a reader to disentangle, it adds a sense of realism.

    The main character, Margot, uses power and sex to climb up the corporate ladder of the hotel where she works. She controls the future of her sister, Thandi, by wielding promises to pay for her education. Thandi wants to be an artist, but Margot persuades her she wants to be a doctor. Thandi also participates in her own exploitation by literally trying to be whiter than she is -- using lightening creams provided by a respected elder, Miss Ruby, and wrapping herself in plastic, despite the hot sun -- to erase her blackness.

"Remembah to stay outta the sun like ah tell yuh," Miss Ruby says. "'Cause you and I both know, God nuh like ugly."

    Others in the book routinely manipulate those around them. Miss Ruby encourages the uses of creams to make them paler. Margot's and Thandi's mother, Delores, sells them to older men. Those men rape and assault the woman around them.

    It comes to a head as a new hotel arises on the banks of their small community, the fruition of Margot's dream. But Thandi revolts to an extent, and as their futures play out, we learn the trauma and abuses of their pasts, partly explaining their actions.