11/16/2020
Jones’s intense debut explores the poverty and crime in Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, amid an explosive collision between tourists and locals. The place, called Paradise by foreigners and residents alike, turns out to be a living hell for two women whose lives are changed by one horrific incident. Lala, a local hair braider, is stuck in a turbulent marriage to Adan, a burglar. Mira Whalen, a former local who now lives in London, is vacationing with her English husband, Peter, at their beachfront villa. One night, Lala is on the beach, in labor and about to give birth. Adan, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found. Lala stumbles upon the Whalens’ mansion and presses the buzzer for help. She hears a gunshot and Adan rushes out, an ear-piercing shriek following on his heels. A parallel narrative follows Mira dealing with the aftermath of Peter’s murder by Adan, while a detective works the case, and more violence ensues as Lala and Mira’s lives eventually collide. Rich characters and pulsing backstories add a great deal of flavor to the drama. Jones is off to a strong start. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander (Jan.)
"About a group of disparate characters in Barbados, all drawn together by a murder. The island may appear, at first glance, to be a near-paradise, but Jones’s forensic prose reveals a society riven by hardship, betrayal and inequality. It is a novel of great elegance and verve — hard to believe it’s a debut."—Maggie O’Farrell, author of Hamnet David Canfield , Entertainment Weekly Deesha Philyaw, New York Times Book Review Refinery 29 Good Housekeeping Hamilton Cain, Washington Post Kirkus Reviews Publishers Weekly O Magazine Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House is an intricately plotted allegory that explores the consequences of believing that you know better than the women who made you and charts the inheritance of trauma that is all too common in Caribbean women's lives. With rare compassion and deft storytelling, Jones renders a narrative that is haunting and unforgettable.”—Naomi Jackson, author of The Star Side of Bird Hill ” —Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Diana Evans, author of Ordinary People and winner of the Orange Award for New Writers "How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House is simply brilliant. By the first chapter, it burned into my heart. Ambitious, poetic, and layered with the rich voices of its many stunning characters, this terrific debut novel by Cherie Jones opened my eyes to the many ways that her young Barbadian protagonist must fight for her life."—Lawrence Hill, author of The Illegal and The Book of Negroes Elle.com Parade Magazine Marie Claire Ms. Magazine How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House has many revelations.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune The Skimm
"Here is a bright new star. Cherie Jones has talent abounding, drawing us with skill, delicacy and glorious style into a vortex of Bajan lives on the edge, clashing across class and colour divides. This is one of the strongest, most assured and heart-wrenching debuts I have ever read."
One-Armed Sister is simply brilliant. By the first chapter, it burned into my heart. Ambitious, poetic, and layered with the rich voices of its many stunning characters, this terrific début novel by Cherie Jones opened my eyes to the many ways that her young Barbadian protagonist must fight for her life. One-Armed Sister will stay with me, and will seduce readers for decades.
A hard-hitting and unflinching novel from a bold new writer who tackles head-on the brutal extremes of patriarchal abuse. ”
A gripping thriller, a symphony of voices and a novel of deep empathy
"Jones writing style is so rich and visual. You can picture what is going on with each of the characters. The narrative and action is so real. There isn’t one wasted word or moment in the carefully edited story. Jones has a gift for writing – part stream of consciousness and part Maya Angelou shown in the simplicity of the language melded with the complexity of the situation. It is an empathetic thriller that shows the will to survive....It is one of the best debuts from a writer who isn’t afraid to tell a story that many writers wouldn’t.”
"Powerful, unflinching."
Dazzling....The storytelling is far from breathless, but it will leave you that way: The effect is of a horrific opera in which ugliness is inevitable, but no less gutting when it appears. And in this opera, there are no minor characters. Each one, carefully and vividly crafted, has a crucial part to play....The main culprit in this book is patriarchy itself, with its view of masculinity as narrow as the tunnels beneath Baxter’s village. It’s a masculinity so fragile, toxic and entitled that it would rather kill and die than endure a perceived insult.”
New York Times Book Review
"[An] outstanding debut."
Cherie Jones’ How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House is an intricately plotted allegory that explores the consequences of believing that you know better than the women who made you and charts the inheritance of trauma that is all too common in Caribbean women's lives. With rare compassion and deft storytelling, Jones renders a narrative that is haunting and unforgettable.”
This book unfolds around the reader like ripples in water, it offers an unflinching vision of what it means to have a body and to fight to protect that body, it demands attention. These are characters’ voices I will be hearing for a long time and a book I will be recommending to everyone.
Rare is the first book that reveals the writer fully formed, the muscles and sinews of her sentences firm and taut, the voice distinctly her own....But Cherie Jones’s lavish, cinematic debut, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House , rises to that high bar, its beguiling title a steppingstone into a Barbados that’s both Caribbean paradise and a crime-riddled underworld. The novel’s a stunner….Jones’s prose is supple, often luxuriant, but the structure of her novel is even more impressive as she bobs and weaves through the aftermath of two mysterious crimes....Here’s the launch of a stellar literary career.”
"Were I not reviewing it, I might have tried to put it down – I say “tried”, because the book is intensely compelling…You are ensnared in a web with these characters and their trauma; their claustrophobia becomes your own. It’s a startling achievement. What shines through is a pitiless truth that stays with you long after the story ends"
08/01/2020
A Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner, practicing lawyer Jones dreams up a debut novel set in sparkling Baxter Beach, Barbados, where a botched robbery by charming smalltime criminal Adan reveals tensions between wealthy ex-pats and the locals who serve them. Among the characters: a mother who has lost her baby, a woman living unsteadily between the two worlds, and two men who risk everything to find a better life.
2020-10-27
Barbadian author Jones' harrowing debut is set on a fictional strip of Caribbean shore called Baxter's Beach in the town of Paradise. It opens with a fable told by Wilma to her 13-year-old granddaughter, Lala, about the nasty fate of a girl who didn't listen. "Curiosity kill the cat, says Wilma, don't make yourself stupid like the one-arm sister." This gambit backfires—when we next see Lala, she's 18, very pregnant, in horrible pain, and bleeding "blurry poinsettia flowers everywhere" in a rickety beach shack. She stumbles to the nearest neighboring house, a fancy villa, presses the doorbell, and hears gunshots inside. She has interrupted her baby's father, Adan, midrobbery, and he's had to shoot his victim. It’s the man’s own fault, says Adan. And Lala’s fault what he does to her, what will happen to their baby, to their friend Tone—yet he's the one who has been torturing animals since he was a boy. In fact, Adan is one of the most repellent and unredeemed villains we have encountered in quite some time. Lala has pretty much figured it out—"Maybe it is time to accept that this man is not the laughing giant you meet riding a unicycle at a fair two summers ago"—but still cannot escape him. He won't let her work—she's a braider on the beach, a job she loves—and has stolen what little money she has. The novel moves among the perspectives of several characters, including Mira Whalen, the widow of the murdered man. Mira is a former prostitute whose tourist client left his wife for her; Adan's crime severs her from the amazing life she lucked into, with homes in England and here on the beach, with sweet stepchildren, friends, and travel, and the only conjugal love and happiness evoked in the entire novel.
A compelling and terribly sad story of lives defined by trauma generation after generation.
