Adamine Bustamante is born in Jamaica, inside one of the islands last leper colonies. When she goes to a Revivalist Church, she discovers her gift of warning. But no one has bothered to warn Adamine that when she migrates to England her prophecies of hurricanes and earthquakes will no longer be respected. People will think she is crazy and lock her away in a mental hospital. Now, an old woman, Adamine wants to tell her own story but she must compete with Mr Writer Man the novelist who is twisting her words for his own book, and Adamine doesnt know why. In a story about magic and migration, about stories and story-telling, we discover it is never one person who owns a story, or who has the right to tell it.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
'a novel posing questions about the very nature of storytelling...a novel for those who are prepared to be teased, willing to roll their tongues around colourful patois and willing to suspend disbelief, relinquinshing their need for things to turn out as they ought to, in exchange for exploring things as they might be. After all, isn't that level of engagement what makes for the most compelling stories?' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY 'it's unlikely The Last Warner Woman is going to disappoint those who enjoy a wry, magical realist tale of life and death set among the common folk of an offbeat locale... The ace in Miller's hand is a postmodern twist. an intelligent, engrossing yarn.' METRO 'Poetic and totally original' THE TIMES 'a book packed full of magic realism. It plays with time, voice and reality, luring the reader into one tale before rapidly switching to another. It probes the subjects of death, psychiatric illness and emigration, but in a way that is strangely uplifting, occasionally funny, and frequently moving.' THE SCOTSMAN '[A] magical read' THE HERALD (Glasgow) 'Hottest Summer Reads' 'Skipping effortlessly through a host of complex characters, with this searching and lyrical work Kei Miller achieves an incredibly engaging range of voice from the outset. Laced with issues of migration, family, faith, and most impressively, the imperceptible politics of storytelling, Miller has spun an indelible yarn' THE LIST 'This is magical, lyrical and spellbinding writing from the author of the acclaimed The Same Earth, described by The Independent as a 'name to watch'.' GRANTA 'Miller isn't just a writer... he is a true alchemist and he has produced a thing of beauty here.' -- Louise Doughty THE HERALD (Glasgow) 'Told with delicacy and lyricism... [The Last Warner Woman] is a novel about migration and the nature of storytelling.' THE BIG ISSUE 'this novel has thrummed with energy. The story has spilled out from between the covers... Several days later Adamine's experiences are still fresh in my mind. The deeply disturbed life of a seer has, appropriately enough, cast a sly spell. Allow yourself to be possessed.' SCOTTISH REVIEW OF BOOKS
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Kei Miller was born in Jamaica in 1978. He is currently teaching Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. He has published several collections of poetry and a book of short stories published by Macmillan Caribbean, THE FEAR OF STONES, which was shortlisted for the COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth not just a read, but a re-reading,
By Mum Betty (Sussex, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Last Warner Woman (Paperback)
Being in bed with a bad cold, I read this through ... then I read it through a second time the next day and enjoyed my second reading as much as my first. Many things about this novel appeal to me: its view of an aspect of Jamaican life and the life of Jamaicans who emigrated Britain; its device of two different narrators telling the same story and that of the story within a story; the use of parable; its use of Jamaican speech (but not so much that the reader struggles to understand it); the notion that truth and fact are not the same and that truth can be more than fact or exist independent of fact. It is the literary equivalent of an object or painting that one can see from different points of view, each different view yielding different insights. It also touched another memory. I used regularly to see a woman, probably Jamaican, passing by our house or in the centre of our town in the East Midlands, who I now realise was probably just such a Warner Woman. I never knew her well, but always felt a warmth towards her, standing on the street corner outside our house dressed in elaborate red-and-white with a red cap of her own design, with a staff and bell, shouting her biblical warnings to whomever would hear. I now feel I understand her a little better than I did then.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Magical and Realistic,
By Jawill "jawill" (Waycross, GA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Last Warner Woman (Paperback)
Loved this novel about storytelling. Because this was a story about variations of a story,there were frequent flashbacks. One story is being told by the mysterious Mr. Writer Man and a variation of the story is being told by the main character,Pauline Portious, as she whispers it to the universe. Somewhere between the two or more variations we get to the truth. Some aspects of the story reminded me of the magical realism genre of Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I liked the elements of realism: the long lines at the Registrar's office, for example, and the employees chit chatting about the long running Jamaican soap opera. I have been in that line. I used to listen to the local soap, Royal Palm Estates, probably more than 10 years ago. There really was a home for lepers in St. Catherine. Catholic nuns were stationed to serve there. One nun,Sister Mary Augustine, wrote a book,"Two Hearts, One Fire", about her experiences. There really used to be Warner Women and Men preaching and prophesying gloom and doom. I enjoyed the flow of the language, the quirky characters. I liked the ironic situations and I liked how the story took us in a full circle. The Original Pearline Portious gave birth in a home where lepers were isolated and the second Pearline Portious gave birth where the mentally disturbed were isolated. Some readers will find the story repetitive but I enjoyed the repetition and the twists and turns of the story as it developed.
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