AUGUST 2022 - AudioFile
Caribbean accents from narrators Ben Onwukwe and Vivienne Acheampong animate this compelling story inspired by the Taíno legend of Aycayia, who is cursed to exist for eternity as a mermaid. The lonely creature lives in exile for centuries until one day, brutally captured by sports fishermen near Black Conch Island, Aycayia finds herself on land again. Rescued by David, a local fisherman who plans to return her to the sea, she transforms back into a woman—with bittersweet repercussions. Onwukwe performs the third-person narration in deep, resonant tones interspersed with vivid characterizations of the colorful supporting cast. His delivery of David’s journal entries adds pathos and a raw intensity that is enhanced by Acheampong’s emotional bursts of Aycayia’s thoughts. These are expressed in free-verse poetry. S.A.A. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
06/27/2022
Roffey (The Tryst) spins a vivid phantasmagorical fairy tale based on a pre-Columbian Taino legend. In 1976, a white Floridian banker and his son take a fishing expedition off a fictional Caribbean island called Black Conch. Instead of a marlin, they hook a mermaid with Indigenous complexion and tattoos. The father imagines selling her to a museum or to Sea World. David Baptiste, a dreadlocked local fisherman who has previously serenaded the inquisitive creature, looks on in horror as the men stick her with a gaffing hook and knock her unconscious. That night, David cuts her bonds and takes her to his home. He means to return her to the sea as soon as possible, but while she is lying in salt water in David’s bathtub, she transforms into a young woman and the two become lovers. It turns out the mermaid, whose name is Aycayia, is not only in danger of being returned to the Americans by the authorities, but is subjected to a 1,000-year-old curse. As Aycayia acclimates to life on land and she and David fall in love, the pair must navigate a host of perils and determine if there’s a future for Aycayia outside the sea—and, if so, what it would be. With a lilting patois and rollicking prose, Roffey evokes the Antillean settings, characters, and culture. This makes for an entrancing siren song. (July)
From the Publisher
WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
“One can’t help admiring the boldness of Roffey’s vision. . . . Sentence by sensuous sentence, Roffey builds a verdant, complicated world that is a pleasure to live inside. . . . Aycayia is a magical creature, though rendered so physically you might start to believe in the existence of mermaids.”—Shruti Swamy, The New York Times
“Vivid imagery, discussion-worthy themes, Creole verbiage and a melding of history and magic make The Mermaid of Black Conch come to life. It’s a confluence of lore in which subtle details change depending on who is telling the story. Each has their own idea of what it is to be a man, a woman, the oppressor, the oppressed, or something in between worlds. . . . It seems Roffey has hit her stride.”—Donna Edwards, Associated Press
“A vivid phantasmagorical fairy tale . . . With a lilting patois and rollicking prose, Roffey evokes the Antillean settings, characters, and culture. This makes for an entrancing siren song.”—Publishers Weekly
“Achingly evocative, the Black Conch mermaid’s story and the people she meets after her return from the sea powerfully capture the nature of longing and belonging.”—Bridget Thoreson, Booklist
“[Roffey is] changing the face of Caribbean literature. . . . [The Mermaid of Black Conch] joins an impressive wave of recent books by Trinidadian women writers . . . which are helping redefine a literature once dominated by noisy men.”—Anderson Tepper, Los Angeles Times
“Full of lean, elegant, evocative prose that never overstays its welcome or drifts too far from its narrative, this finely honed novel about belonging, alienation and the enduring power of stories moves with the breathtaking rush of an ocean wave. . . . Like her title character, Roffey’s prose is a shape-shifting, living thing, moving through emotional highs and lows with an almost mercurial grace. Roffey achieves this flow state with astonishing economy, which enables her to linger on existential questions. . . . A gripping dark fairy tale that any fan of contemporary fantasy will happily swim through.”—Matthew Jackson, BookPage
“Poetic, meticulous prose . . . While this may seem like a tale often told, it is set apart by the rich materiality of the writing and of its Caribbean setting. . . . Roffey’s descriptions of Aycayia are strikingly different from the girlish, suspiciously well-groomed mermaids of popular culture and animated films. . . . Roffey takes the mermaid, makes her fleshy, textured, and real, and places her in the milieu of a rich cultural world. She gives us a love story between a fisherman and a mermaid that feels both fresh and timeless. In capturing every detail of the mermaid’s slow, messy transformation back to woman, Roffey speaks to longings that, as a reader, I did not know I had.”—Jalondra A. Davis, Los Angeles Review of Books
“A story that’s evocative and reminiscent of oral storytelling traditions . . . Written partly in a beautiful rhythmic, lilting patois that creates a bold vision, it’s easy to find yourself deeply immersed in Roffey’s world, in a narrative that shows us how magic realism is oftentimes the best, most appropriate genre for post colonial fiction.”—Mahvesh Murad, Tor.com
“A searing blend of Caribbean magical realism and contemporary examination of misogyny and the reverberations of colonial oppression . . . Roffey’s fable is a moving love story, full of messy, glorious eroticism, but she also shines a light on the dangers of toxic masculinity, racial inequity and the difficulty of understanding our true natures.”—Connie Ogle, Star Tribune
“A mesmerizing, fantastical tale that explores all-too-real Otherness . . . The strange magic in The Mermaid of Black Conch is the best kind — wondrous, amazing to all who encounter it, but utterly real. . . . Roffey’s writing is a delight to swim in. It’s lyrical and lovely, and it flows clear and deep as the waters around Black Conch. Her landscape descriptions are rich, whether she is painting pictures of the lush forest shading Miss Rain’s house or of the ocean.”—Sally Shivnan, Washington Independent Review of Books
“Every sentence in Monique Roffey's extraordinary book is alive with fluming, amphibious intelligence and alert to the blessing, and the curse, of love in a life of flux. A new sea hymnal to challenge, and change, the old dark songs that humans know by heart.”—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Orange World and Other Stories
“I absolutely devoured The Mermaid of Black Conch. It’s wonderful, immersive, evocative . . . A masterclass of world-building.”—Bridget Collins, author of The Binding
“Stunning . . . A mesmerising read.”—Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall
“The novel is a unique Caribbean fable that takes the familiar story of a mermaid abruptly thrust onshore and brings it to a new place. It reads like the work of a novelist in command of her material and focused on using a mythic ‘then’ to speak to now.”—Malachi McIntosh, fiction chair, OCM Bocas Prize 2021
“Once I had started it . . . I couldn’t stop. It was quite unlike anything I’d ever read. Such brilliant mythmaking; such powerful storytelling. The account of the mermaid’s capture was agonising to read – a feminist reframing of all those Great American Novels about men and the sea. Monique Roffey managed to say so much about society’s treatment of difference, enslavement, exploitation of the natural world, sexual politics, but without ever sermonising or compromising the storytelling.”—Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures
“[The Mermaid of Black Conch] is a daring, mesmerising novel that continually unseats expectation – I was deliciously unsure, throughout, what would happen next. With her fierce and shape-shifting mermaid, Roffey has created a modern myth about belonging and the bonds humans form with each other and with their land, single-handedly bringing magic realism up-to-date.”—Maggie O’Farrell, The Observer, “Summer Reads to Get Lost In”
“An extraordinary, beautifully written, captivating, visceral book - full of mythic energy and unforgettable characters, including some tremendously transgressive women. . . . It is utterly original - unlike anything we've ever read - and feels like a classic in the making from a writer at the height of her powers. It's a book that will take you to the furthest reaches of your imagination - we found it completely compelling.”—Suzannah Lipscomb, chair of Costa Book Awards Judges, 2020
“A joy to read, brimming with memorable characters and vivid descriptions. . . . For me, this was a hugely entertaining and thought-provoking novel.”—Rebecca Jones, BBC News
“Not your standard mermaid. No comb and glass, no Lorelei hair. No catch and release.”—Margaret Atwood, author of The Testaments, via Twitter
“[Monique Roffey] is the most adventurous of writers and The Mermaid of Black Conch does not disappoint. . . . This is a strange, haunting, original and memorable novel about Aycayia, a mermaid from deep history who is entrapped and taken out of the sea. . . . This is a novel packed with layers of meaning around womanhood, alienation, masculinity, toxic attitudes towards women, and inter-female rivalry, as well as love, compassion and the search for home.”—Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other
“At last we have Monique Roffey to unhook woman from legend and bring tired myth into the realm of flesh and blood and sex. The Mermaid of Black Conch plunges fearlessly into the deeps of misogyny, colonial violence, friendship, jealousy, and erotic love in a reading experience as captivating as a tropical storm. Full-throated and mesmerizing.”—C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold
“Wonderfully written, with both soul and intense drama - it glistens almost, like the mermaid!”—Diana Evans, author of Ordinary People
“The Mermaid of Black Conch arrives bearing tragedy and beauty. Monique Roffey has created a new myth for an age of ruined oceans. She continues to be one of our most exciting new Caribbean voices.”—A.L. Kennedy, author of The Little Snake
“Monique Roffey is a writer of verve, vibrancy and compassion, and her work is always a joy to read.”—Sarah Hall, author of Burntcoat
“The Mermaid of Black Conch is like a lost myth, found, and made fresh again for our times.”—Tessa McWatt, author of Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging
“[The Mermaid of Black Conch] is a strange and beautiful book. . . . Roffey’s writing is lyrical and filled with magic, but there is plenty of bittersweet realism to ground it.”—Sophie Dahl, Daily Mail (UK)
Library Journal
03/01/2022
Literary author Roffey's Costa Book of the Year Award winner is a feminist retelling of an old Taino myth BISACed as Fairy Tales/Romance/Historical Fiction and amplified by a condemnation of colonization in the Caribbean. In the 1970s, David is fishing off the island of Black Conch when he rescues a mermaid netted by some raucous tourists from the States. Actually, she's a beautiful young Taino woman named Aycayia who was cursed centuries ago by envious wives to take the form of a sea creature. As she comes to live with David, who falls in love with her, she takes on human form and begins relearning human ways while bearing witness to the devastation wrought by empire.
AUGUST 2022 - AudioFile
Caribbean accents from narrators Ben Onwukwe and Vivienne Acheampong animate this compelling story inspired by the Taíno legend of Aycayia, who is cursed to exist for eternity as a mermaid. The lonely creature lives in exile for centuries until one day, brutally captured by sports fishermen near Black Conch Island, Aycayia finds herself on land again. Rescued by David, a local fisherman who plans to return her to the sea, she transforms back into a woman—with bittersweet repercussions. Onwukwe performs the third-person narration in deep, resonant tones interspersed with vivid characterizations of the colorful supporting cast. His delivery of David’s journal entries adds pathos and a raw intensity that is enhanced by Acheampong’s emotional bursts of Aycayia’s thoughts. These are expressed in free-verse poetry. S.A.A. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-04-27
In this Costa Award–winning novel, the discovery of a mermaid makes waves on a fictional Caribbean island.
In 1976, during an annual fishing competition in the waters off Black Conch, a creature is hauled aboard a whaler called Dauntless. The boat is owned by a White father-and-son duo who have come from Florida to take part in the competition. David Baptiste, a local Black fisherman, is the only one who knows that a strange creature lurks in the water, so when she’s strung up on the jetty and left to bleed out by the astonished but proud Americans, it’s Baptiste who performs a stealthy rescue. In his saltwater-filled bathtub, the mermaid begins transforming back into a woman. Over time, Baptiste learns her story: Belonging to the Indigenous Taino people, the mermaid, Aycayia, was once a woman who was cursed to her fate by other women in her village. As she relearns human life, taught to read by Baptiste’s White landlady, Arcadia Rain, and befriended by Arcadia’s young Deaf son, Aycayia wonders whether, through her millennialong exile in the sea, she has managed to shake off her curse and connect again to the land of her people. Told through journal entries written by Baptiste decades after the events, verse snippets from Aycayia, and omniscient narration swirling through a core group of characters, the mermaid’s melancholy tale is a clear colonial allegory, the story of an island nation and its history of Indigenous people vanishing, slavery, European domination, and independence, with an uneasy and watchful present relationship between the White and Black islanders. These relationships, especially, are keenly observed and wrought: Roffey herself was born in Trinidad to a British father and a European mother who was born in Egypt, and she identifies as binational and White Creole.
A mournful tour through Caribbean history via one of its most indelible legends.
