How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

A beautifully written novel of love and violence set in Paradise. The story focuses on Lana, the latest in a lineage of women who have become ensnared in a cycle of domestic abuse, her criminal husband, and the ex-pats he targets.

Set in Barbados, a novel featuring career criminals, victims of violence, and rich ex-pats. Violent, sad, and horrifying, but so well-written and so real that you have to find out what's going to happen next.

Damn. I haven't read such an impressive novel in awhile. Cherie Jones can spin a story. The narrative and prose of this novel was incredible. It's rare that I think I'd like to hear the author read this book to me, but with this book, there were times I imagined hearing her voice, and that was part of what makes this such a successful novel: I heard the characters in my head. Jones doesn't just spin a story, she includes details of toenails that linger with you after you finish the novel, even though there was nothing dramatic about the toenails, it's how she makes us see how a gigalo remembers a client's nails, and how that alerts our senses are we read this rich novel.

This novel takes place in Barbados, a touristy island where the wealthy and impoverished more or less depend on each other for their needs. The main character is Lala, a young woman born to another young woman who was born to another young woman, and all the young women are treated like shit by the men in their lives, and the grandmother, Wilma, just can't muster the strength to protect her daughter or granddaughter from her vicious husband. The only man who really comes across as trustworthy in he novel is the foreign doctor who reaches out to help the women. Tone, who meet at 15, after he has been raped, loves Lala but fears her husband, whom is his childhood friend, a brute of a man. But Tone, when he remembers this rape, is also a violent man. No one can escape their past, yet, they keep trying.

The conversations between Wilma and her daughter and granddaughter, the way she forces them to sleep in the outhouse to protect them from her husband, are so deeply troubling while being so deeply familiar.

As the novel comes to an end, which I didn't want to happen, all the loose ends start falling in place, and there's a brief moment of optimism, yet, as readers, we wonder if Lala ever learns who is her father, ever returns to this island, if Tone's ever able to be free of the "Thing" that controls his life.

I will say this: After climbing the ladder to exit the pool today, I was glad a man offered me hand, and was reminded that not all men are so damaged and damaging as the men in this beautiful novel.