"This transporting history of an imperfect marriage braids together dramatic episodes, island history and fable, all infused with Lee’s sharp insights into human nature."
—People Magazine
"Come for the views, stay for simmering tensions and culture clashes. Lee welcomes readers with lush language, then lays out a dazzling buffet of choices and assumptions that are ripe for questioning."
—The New York Times
"A gorgeous narrative that perhaps only Lee could have constructed — an ambitious attempt to use fiction to explore the reality of a world fractured by race and class."
—The Washington Post
"Spellbinding! I’m in utter awe of Red Island House. . . . Lee’s exquisitely precise language brings the reader deep into the Malagasy world, both geographically and emotionally, and I never wanted to leave. This book is a marvel."
—Elin Hilderbrand
"Lush, perceptive... a unique, surprising work – at once a psychological novel, a novel of place and a novel about relationships."
—Mark Athitakis, USA Today
"Lee combines luscious physical descriptions with sharp-witted social perception in this thrilling novel... she approaches the broadly political and the minutely intimate with equally fine prose."
—Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Lee’s striking writing is layered and thick with evocative descriptions of people, landscapes, feelings and foreboding. Sociological and psychological, it’s prose with the abstract feel of poetry. The stories of Red Island House are vibrant and enchanting."
—BookPage, starred review
"Offers a captivating take on colonialism, privilege, race, and heritage."
—Christian Science Monitor
“Journey to the island of Madagascar through the eyes of a Black American woman in an epic tale that explores the dangers of love against the backdrop of paradise."
—San Francisco Book Review
"Andrea Lee whisks you to the island of Madagascar and spins interconnected stories set on the beach."
—Martha Stewart Living
"Lee writes with such lush and observant precision that you feel you are traveling with her."
—The Millions
"Spellbinding! I’m in utter awe of Red Island House... Lee’s exquisitely precise language brings the reader deep into the Malagasy world, both geographically and emotionally, and I never wanted to leave. This book is a marvel." Elin Hildebrand
"Brilliant and tragic."
—Booklist, starred review
"A mesmerizing novel... The lush natural habitat and privileged ex-pat existence contrast starkly with the island’s poverty and traditions, and Lee makes magic of this to deliver a singularly intriguing and mysterious saga that casts an enduring spell."
—O Magazine, Most Anticipated Books of 2021
"Gorgeous writing, fascinating stories, and a vibrant cast of locals and expats dance around this basic theme ... An utterly captivating, richly detailed, and highly critical vision of how the one percent lives in neocolonial paradise."
—Kirkus, starred review
"Seductive... the writing is vivid... the overall impact is quietly powerful."
—Publishers Weekly
"Lee is known for the evocative settings of her...books...I’m excited to travel to Madagascar with her new novel."
—The Every Girl
"The star is Madagascar... whose terrain is so gorgeously described by Lee that any reader with an ounce of adventurousness would move to the island tomorrow. But beauty can never hide tension for long, and Lee deftly handles race and class in ways that resonate even for those who could not find Madagascar with a GPS."
—Air Mail
"Red Island House is one of the best novels of the year. A beautifully constructed manifesto on the Black expatriate view of the world, Andrea Lee explores mixed race heritage and inheritance in such an electric, interesting way.”
—Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie
“Andrea Lee's new novel—about a Black American woman caught between her privilege and her identity—is daring, riveting and deep. The lavish vacation home she and her husband build on an impoverished African island is a collision course, and like this novel, will make you question everything you thought you understood—about allegiance and race, politics and desire.”
—Danzy Senna, author of New People
"Andrea Lee's latest novel is a work of supreme knowingness, and keen observation. As one of the more articulate voices we have on the exigencies of race, place, and gender, Lee has rendered, in this superbly constructed and felt book, that rare thing: a work of the imagination as shattering as the truth."
—Hilton Als, author of The Women and White Girls
“‘In Madagascar, everything speaks’ . . . if you can hear it. And hear it all does Andrea Lee’s exquisitely sentient protagonist. At first dimly, but then with an ever more discerning ear, Shay attunes herself and the reader to subtlety after subtlety, until the island has yielded extraordinary truths, not only about itself, its people, and its visitors, but about the undertow of plunder. This is a ravishing book ofuncommon depth; I loved it.”
—Gish Jen, author of The Resisters
“Lee’s Red Island House is a seductive, haunted dreamscape where ancestors stir trouble across four centuries and three continents. From the moment Shay Senna arrives at this seaside Madagascar paradise, she senses danger. Betrayal comes but so does reconciliation and a healing sisterhood, as Lee lures us into a realm where boundaries between the real and the surreal disappear.”
—A’Lelia Bundles, author of Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker
"This magical novel—a collection of reflections and vignettes—is as lush, dense and vivid as the Madagascar it describes. Pairing rich detail with reflective restraint, Lee has created something truly beautiful: At once an exploration of an enchanted island and a meditation on modern womanhood."
—Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go
"At once charming and deeply serious, this eloquent, elegant, beautifully written novel takes on the full range of human experience: love and disappointment, hope and betrayal, race, class, colonialism, moral obligation, the high cost of being an outsiderand the equally high price of belonging."
—Francine Prose, author of Mister Monkey
"I know of no other writer who creates the kinds of worlds Andrea Lee imagines—the exquisite prose, the otherworldly landscapes, the fascinating people. Red Island House transported me. It may have looked like I was sitting on my couch reading a book, but I’m telling you I traveled to Madagascar.”
—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Wench and Balm
★ 2020-12-25
When she weds an Italian tycoon, an African American intellectual becomes the unwilling mistress of an estate in Madagascar.
They meet at a wedding in Como, Italy, a case of opposites attract. "To Shay, fresh out of graduate school, Senna is a new experience: this cheeky, charismatic Italian a decade and a half older than she is, a businessman...who...has bought part of an actual island." During their courtship, Senna builds the Red House, a tropical mansion whose architectural influences range from Indonesia to Antigua to Disney World, staffing it with an army of locals and a Greek house manager, to provide a setting for an annual holiday throughout their married life. In a series of tales set over two decades, Shay has a love-hate relationship with the estate and her role there; she is "expected to pass her holiday months not as a sojourner comfortably decompressing from a busy Milan life of teaching and translating and chivying her college-bound kids, but as a vigilant matriarch who exerts iron control—even if it is part-time—over the work ethic, health, and morality of her numerous Malagasy household staff." Gorgeous writing, fascinating stories, and a vibrant cast of locals and expats dance around this basic theme. One of Shay's early allies is Bertine La Grande, the head housekeeper, who helps her use witchcraft to undo the wrongs wrought by her husband and the evil manager. Another thread depicts the rivalry between two powerful women, one a restaurateur and the other a bar owner. Against a background of myth and magic, as well as racism, sex tourism, and exploitation, the never-perfect match between Senna and Shay continues to devolve.
An utterly captivating, richly detailed, and highly critical vision of how the one percent lives in neocolonial paradise.