Lilla is the white mistress of a once grand but now now rotting colonial mansion and Vel, her black servant. The two West Indian women, both 33 years of age, have lived in the same house for 10 years, but it is not until Lilla rescues Vel from a near-fatal abortion attempt, that the two really get to know each other. Young Trinidadian author Robert Antoni weaves a brightly colored tapestry of life in the Caribbeana remarkable tale of family, myth, religionand language.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Acclaimed Trinidadian writer Robert Antoni's second novel tells the life stories of two West Indian women: Lilla, the white mistress of a dilapidated colonial mansion, and Vel, the longtime black servant who lives with her. The two women have always kept an emotional distance by the accidents of their birth, but when Vel finds herself pregnant, Lilla puts her to bed in her own bedroom. Writing lyrically and convincingly in the voices of the two women themselves, Antoni lets them tell their life stories--a heady mixture of sex, religion, myth, and the musicality of their own inner languages. Antoni's first novel, Divina Trace won the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
From Library Journal
In Antoni's second novel (following Divina Trace, Overlook, 1992, which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize), two women with vastly different backgrounds?Lilla, the white mistress of a colonial mansion, and Vel, her black servant?come together over an unborn child. The two have lived cloistered in a dilapidated old mansion for ten years. When Vel discovers that she is pregnant and attempts to rid herself of the child, Lilla discovers the truth, saves Vel from a botched abortion, and brings Vel to the safety of her own bed. Through flashbacks, we learn about each woman's life as she tells her tale to the unborn child. Literate and intricately crafted, this book is an interesting exploration of a time when different races led very different lives. For literary fiction collections.
-?Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-?Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A West Indian Classic,
By IsolaBlue (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Blessed Is the Fruit: A Novel (Hardcover)
Lil Grandsol lives alone in the decaying old house that is all that remains of her family's plantation wealth. Vel is the young woman who has come to replace the long-time house servant. Together, Lil and Vel battle their histories and personal demons in a poignant attempt to survive. Antoni's tale of two West Indian women, one black and one white, from different socio-economic backgrounds is a wonderful example of stepping out of oneself to write. Antoni, a male writer, did this so well that one can only attribute his artistic ability to the unique mastery of mental gender crossing. Rich in West Indian culture, with pages of perfectly rendered dialect, and one in which religion plays heavily, this novel weaves in and out of sexuality alternately confusing and intensifying the narrative.This is a novel about the power of women and connections, and it forcefully evokes the real emotions that go into unexpected and untraditional love. It is amazing that the book has not gotten more attention. Antoni is brilliant, and his book deserves to be a West Indian classic along the order of Jean Rhys' WIDE SARGASSO SEA.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best of the half-century.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Blessed Is the Fruit: A Novel (Hardcover)
Robert Antoni's _Blessed_is_the_Fruit_ is one of the most lyrically expressive and ingeniously experimental novels of the last 50 years. As in his first novel _Divina_Trace_, Antoni pays particular attention to the structure of his novel. _Blessed_ has the structure of a rosary with each of the three main sections made up of 10 , or a decade, of sections. This is a particuarly appropriate image for a novelist whose 2 novels have focused on the saving and damning power of religion, both formal and folk, in Caribbean society. At heart of _Blessed_ is a moving tale of the crossing of racial and religious boundaries, of the birth of a new, yet questionable, hope to a confused and struggling culture. This novel has been labeled confusing by one reader, but it is no more confusing than life itself, and this novel is intricately structured to allow the reader to fully appreciate the plight and joy of the two main characters.
4.0 out of 5 stars
sensory overload,
By "royalearth" (New York, New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Blessed Is the Fruit: A Novel (Hardcover)
Antoni overwhelmed the senses with many intimacies of island life and of women's beautiful and exclusive suffering. The fact that some parts of this novel were written by a white person or by a man was hard to believe. Reading this novel was like dreaming about a past life.
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