Carnival: A Novel [Paperback]

Robert Antoni (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 2005

Robert Antoni has established himself as one of the most innovative voices to emerge from the Caribbean and the Americas. His ambitious third novel, Carnival, takes us on an expedition that stretches from contemporary New York City to the glitter of Trinidadian Carnival, and deep into the island's mountainous interior. Narrator William Fletcher is an aspiring novelist who has come to New York to escape his affluent West Indian roots. A chance meeting in a Greenwich Village bar reunites him with two of his childhood companions: Laurence and the vivacious and stunning Rachel, William's first love. Together, the three make a liquor-soaked pledge to return "home" to Trinidad for Carnival. The festival starts with passion and pleasure, but the Carnival ecstasy slides into a fog of ganja, alcohol, and the endless calypso beat. As William, Rachel, and Laurence journey to a remote area of the rainforest to "cool down" after the festival, the three hope for a secret paradise, hidden "behind God's back," to begin anew. But even here the demons of history, prejudice, and hatred violently intrude, as the novel's startling conclusion forces them to face both the power-and impotence-of human resilience and human love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Struggling with the writer's life in New York City, ashamed of his wealthy West Indian upbringing and confused about his sexual orientation, William Fletcher is the smart, self-pitying narrator of this promising though unfocused novel, Antoni's third (Divina Trace; Blessed Is the Fruit). When William bumps into his old friend Laurence, once a poor island boy, now an Oxford-educated poet and playwright, and then into Rachel, his second cousin and first love, the trio hatch a plan to return to their native Trinidad to celebrate Carnival. For all the debauchery that is Carnival (think Scotch, marijuana, fireworks, jouvert bands), this section of the novel feels curiously bloodless, perhaps because Antoni's style tends toward short fragments ("He sat up, arms folded over chest. Breathing quickly. His chest rising, falling. Staring down at the ground") and weak transitions ("Before I had a chance to think about it..."; "Before I knew it..."; etc.) The final act of the novel shifts to a remote, mountainous region where William and friends intend to sober up from the merrymaking, but instead find themselves involved in a violent incident involving the Earth People (an isolated settlement of rastas) and a racist police force. Antoni's major themes—race (William is white, Laurence black, Rachel French-Creole) and sexuality—are good ones, but they're not sufficiently developed, and the plot feels somewhat manufactured.
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From Booklist

Celebrated Caribbean writer Antoni excels at confounding expectations. Here his title suggests festivity, but what ensues is a shattering tale of deep-rooted class and racial conflicts erupting into vindictive violence. William, the hard-drinking white West Indian narrator, a floundering New York-based writer, always returns to Trinidad at carnival time, but this year, he is unexpectedly reunited with Laurence, who is black and a gloriously successful, jet-setting writer, and Rachel, William's second cousin and the love of his life, although their ardor is thwarted by his impotency. Seeking escape from their sorrows, they give themselves over to the bewitching calypso beat and cathartic abandon of the carnival. But when Rachel initiates a brazenly public interracial relationship with the King of the Carnival, all hell breaks lose. A master at simultaneously erotic and menacing descriptions, a choreographer of chaos, a storyteller with a cosmic sense of natural forces and human perversity, and a literary trickster who has boldly recast Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises as a harrowing tale of the unhealed wounds of the Caribbean, Antoni considers the crushing cost of survival in a cruelly divisive world and reveals a chilling truth: sometimes love is not enough. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat; First Edition edition (January 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802170056
• ISBN-13: 978-0802170057
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,838,662 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jake Barnes goes to Carnival, November 24, 2006

By 

m_noland "m_noland" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Carnival: A Novel (Paperback)

Part way through this closely observed, and ultimately depressing, novel, I began noticing an odd affinity for "The Sun Also Rises" which I had not read in decades. Soon it became apparent that this was more than a passing similarity but rather a retelling of the story set in contemporary Trinidad during Carnival, complete with vivid descriptions of food, drink, and in this retelling, drugs, with Trini slang playing the role that Spanish did in the original, adding to the exotic color. (The Carnival setting for retelling the story also recalls Marcel Camus' "Orfeo Negro.")

Having not read the original in a long time, I cannot remember how Hemingway captures the bacchanalian haze into which his protagonist descends, and I not sure if it was Antoni's writing, or my own jet-lag, but pretty soon the endless Caribs and joints did get hazy. This being the 21st century, the remake is more explicit than the original - the putative source of Jake/William's sexual difficulties is not left to the imagination, though the novel is sufficiently open-ended along many dimensions that one is left space to draw their own conclusions. Love does not conquer all, but it would be happy to think so.