RED ISLAND HOUSE centers around Shay, an African American intellectual who unexpectedly becomes the mistress of an estate in Madagascar after marrying the charismatic Italian tycoon, Senna. Their courtship unfolds against the backdrop of Como, Italy, where opposites attract—a young scholar and a seasoned businessman. Together, they build the Red House.

With their children now adults who have move away from home, Shay is experiencing the “empty nester” syndrome. Questioning her place in the home while overseeing the Malagasy household staff. She loves the island but the secrets it holds is overwhelming. Bertine La Grande, the head housekeeper, becomes her ally, guiding her through witchcraft to undo the wrongs perpetuated by her husband and the malevolent estate manager.

Senna and Shay’s marriage is unraveling amid the tropical paradise which no longer hold the romantic appeal it once did for the couple. The stories of locals and expats also exposes the cracks in paradise’s façade. Lee invites us to explore the blurred boundaries between love and power, tradition and modernity, and the price paid for privilege.

I wanted to love this the synopsis makes you believe it’s a novel but it felt more like short stories. Themes of racisms and colonialism

Beautifully written. Red Island House explored many topics such as race, class, death, betrayal. I enjoyed this immensely.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this title, but my reading interests have changed. I will not be finishing this book, but look forward to others in the future.

I really try not to have favorites. But, # Scribner has great taste in novels. Author # Andrea Lee and her novel # Red Island House takes place on the mysterious island of Madagascar. Focusing on the danger's of life and love.
#"People do mysterious things when they think they have found paradise. "

I finished this and immediately need more from this author. This is such a quick and deep read. It explores race and identity and life. Red Island House just worked for me and I can’t wait to read more from this author.

I really liked the story building and the imagery that was described. It gave a feeling of both the island of Madagascar as a place both beautiful and mysterious to visit. The story was wonderfully weaved together and made me want to keep going turning the pages to discover more. I love our main characters journey throughout the book from what she discovers about the house, the land and herself in a way. Really good read also a good summer beach read as well in my opinion since that season is coming up.

Upon reading the summary of this book, I was very excited to read this. I do not consider it a bad book but it was lacking in character development for me. It started off fairly good but lost the luster by the end of the book. The concept of Madagascar was very interesting to me and in that aspect I find the book unique.

Red Island House is truly a piece of art! From the cover to the words written in its pages. However it is not for everyone. It definitely took more concentration than most books, with tribal and ethic language and a writing style that was more a collection of short stories than a novel but nonetheless it was enjoyable and beautifully written.

Lovely. I love a book where the setting is like an additional character - this book has not only dynamic characters but also a complex, interesting setting as well. Subjects such as class and inequality are a focus as are family, life and death. It’s written beautifully. Didn’t want it to end. Highly recommend!

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. This is a good read I found hard to put down.

When Shay, a Black American professor, marries Senna, a wealthy Italian, they buy a vacation home in Madagascar. This book unfolds like interconnected short stories of their visits there. The most compelling aspects to me were Shay's reckoning with being an outsider among the native population while having a darker skin tone than other wealthy foreigners. Shay observes Malagasy culture with an American lens - a Black American lens - which, as an American, I thought was very well done. I would be interested in the opinions of Malagasy readers. While I found the writing beautiful, I never found myself deeply connected or invested in the story and what would happen next. A slower read that I would recommend more for the prose than the plot. Also the audiobook has a great narrator, but because of the writing style and lack of transitions, it's a bit hard to keep up.

Red Island House was an intriguing read. Compelling and believable in its depictions of White Europeans leeching local culture and exploiting post-colonial economic structures, I can't say I was sold on the depictions of the Malagasy characters, again, not that I have a solid reference, nor was I sold on the depiction of the Black American protagonist. But something about this read was warm and inviting. I feel most comfortable with 4 stars. I enjoyed it, but I side-eyed the book a couple times.

Excellent and highly original , a story of love, betrayal, and clashing cultures. Set in Madagascar and involving an American born woman and her Italian husband. Beautifully written.

DNF at 40 percent. I really wanted to love this book, but the writing was almost *too* beautiful for me. I found myself re-reading long passages because I would lose myself. From what I read, the novel appears to read like a series of interconnected stories about the main characters interacting with different people on the island.

The short take:
A lush, lyrical, and dense saga about place, love, culture and identity with a touch of magical realism, Andrea Lee’s Red Island House is an episodic novel of race and culture that flirts with fabulism as it portrays a couple at odds with each other and their island home. It’s set in Madagascar, an island nation that floats between Africa and India both culturally and geographically. “Though defined by cartographers as part of Africa, Madagascar really belongs only to itself,” Lee writes. The novel is a bit like that as well. The protagonist, Shay, is a refined academic and an expatriate American. Senna is a big and brash Italian man. They meet at a wedding in Como, Italy, and fall inexorably in love. He’s older and wealthy, and it’s a second marriage for them both.

Sociological and psychological, it’s prose with the abstract feel of poetry. The stories of Red Island House are vibrant and enchanting despite the current of dread that runs through the novel from the start.

Review published in the April issue of BookPage.
Link below

This was compelling and page turning. I’m hopefully it gains a much wider audience. I received some misinformation about the author and am coming back with a new lens. I think this is a book that all readers should pick up.

This book was not for me. For starters it was too slow and the story didn't really develop how I thought it would. I'm sure this would be good for others but I'm not a fan of long winded generational stories.

Red Island House reads like a series of interconnected short stories. It was not always linear but at no time did I feel lost. Our main character Shay is an African-American professor who marries an Italian businessman and goes to live with him in Naples. He has built a vacation home on a small island off the coast of Madagascar. The book opens with the building of this island home. It is supposed to be cursed as he does not follow the tradition of honoring the people or the land.

When Shay arrives at the red house the home is being managed by a Greek overseer who is known for his cruelty. Her husband's support of the Greek after Shay and he fallout is a clear indication of how Senna views her and her position. Shay comes to befriend some of the Malagasy and who show her how to manage the situation. Shortly she starts to feel guilty of her position; her gifts come to signal bribes and her good advice exacerbates issues. She comes to realize that al;thoughher skin is the same that she is not African and is ignorant of traditional practices. I found this part of the book interesting as most books that deal with differences within the diaspora do not address culture and differences in mindset. Shay lives by an American ideal and even her best of intentions could create problems in this very different world. Another interesting point was the idea of black fetishism. Just because a white person is in a relationship with a person of color does not mean that they are not prejudiced. They may be fulfilling some type of fantasy. For Senna this meant finding a vacation villa in a tropical setting and getting himself a dark skinned wife. These were mere trophies for him.

Lee also addresses sexual exploitation and colonialism's role in driving prostitution in third world countries. The imprint that tourists have goes beyond their participation in the sex trade including children left behind by their holiday romances.

Red Island House may be a short book but it is full of heavy themes and descriptive language that is evocative of place. Shay's character was well drawn out and we see her grow and learn and she comes to know the people and the place.

This was a gem of a debut.

There is no place on earth like Madagascar. I mean, literally. There are more types of animals and plants found only here than anyplace else on Earth. I was fortunate to spend three weeks in country some years ago and I was dazzled by its beauty, its strangeness, its out-of-time feeling. Andrea Lee captures all of this in her very evocative novel. Although it focuses on Naratrany, a small island off the main island, the chosen geography captures most of what is exotic about the country. Red Island House, the dream dwelling built by Senna for Shay, his new wife, is the lens this novel through which we view the lives, the loves and the craziness of a paradise without rules. Sex tourism, a local kind of voodoo and all seven sins all come to stay at Red Island House, and some who check in, never want to leave.